POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

Retirement Age roundup – 22 Nov 2010

• Retirement age patterns around the world.

  Key tidbit: "Many governments relaxed retirement-age rules in the 1970s and 1980s, and are now restoring retirement ages to their former levels." And why might there have been loosening in those particular decades... hmm? Perhaps the boomers were coming into the workforce as a glut, and could support more retirees than previous demographics could. Too bad those boomers didn't have enough kids to keep that gravy train rolling.

• Canada looking at its own retirement age increases. With the earliest boomers getting to keep the previous generous benefit....well, for now.
• Germany sticking to its guns. Retirement age to be raised to 67 from 65. And yet you will not hear as of many protests as the French have...where their move was just 60 to 62.
• From the great socialist state of Bolivia, a movement in the opposite direction: retirement age to be dropped to 58. Smoke up, comrades! You've got a duty to drop dead soon after retirement, or this will not keep up!
• And here in America, a little reality about the Social Security retirement age:
  

  In 1940, retiring workers collected benefits for an average of 14 years. Today, that number is up to about 22 years. When today’s 4 year olds retire, retirees would collect Social Security for almost 26 years. In other words, an already beleaguered Social Security system falls farther behind demand.

  ....
  If, for instance, we were going to draw benefits for as long today as we did when the system was young and healthy, we shouldn’t retire until age 75. As for those 4-year-olds we worry about, their retirement age should bump up to 80.

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.