Posted on 02/18/2006 7:25:29 AM PST by Paleo Conservative
The age of retirement should be raised to 85 by 2050 because of trends in life expectancy, a US biologist has said.
Shripad Tuljapurkar of Stanford University says anti-ageing advances could raise life expectancy by a year each year over the next two decades.
A longer life could mean a longer
working life
That will put a strain on economies around the world if current retirement ages are maintained, he warned.
He also told a science meeting in St Louis that 50-year or 75-year mortgages may not be unusual in the future.
Dr Tuljapurkar was speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in the Missouri city.
"People are going to do things they didn't get round to in their working lives. Current institutions are really not equipped at the moment to deal with such long lives," Dr Tuljapurkar said.
"We are going to have to plan a lot more carefully, which people are not very good at."
Lifestyle trends
The Stanford researcher has been looking at relationships between historical trends in ageing, population growth and economic activity.
Based on this, he came up with a scenario in which anti-ageing technologies will increase the most common age of death by one year per year between 2010 and 2030.
Dr Tuljapurkar then applied this scenario to four countries: the US, China, Sweden and India.
In the US the cost of social security and medical care would almost double if people retired at 65
He found that his projected trends in life expectancy would have profound effects on the economy, lifestyle and population demographics.
"It might be possible to go through two mortgages, for example, or even have 50-year or 75-year mortgages," Dr Tuljapurkar explained.
In the US, the cost of social security and medical care would almost double if people retired at 65 under Tuljapurkar's scenario.
But an increase in the retirement age to 85 would bring costs down to today's levels.
However these trends would also create a "permanent underclass" of countries where opportunities for increased life expectancy were not the same as in the industrialised world.
"We can't even get retrovirals to some countries now," he told journalists.
You first, doc.
Along with timeframes until things lapse into the public domain, they just keep moving the goalpost, don't they?
However, just think of the millions of Generation Xers that will have to toil for an additional 20 or 25 years under the baby boomers. They will go absolutely bonkers.
A 75 year mortgage? He must be building an alabastor castle with gold faucets and Italian marble toilets.
For $2,000 you can build a fine 8 x 10 shack. As you save more money, add onto it. In 5 years you'll have 40 x 50 shack. No mortgage necessary.
I guess the Social Security Administration hopes the same thing.
Great, we'll have Alzheimer's victims still working at their jobs.
The pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction. In the not-so-distant past we had child labor abuses, in the future we'll have bosses standing over grannie with a riding whip.
I'm going bonkers right now @_@
I retired when I was 46 and not being able to immediately start collecting S.S. & Medicare was not an incentive to continue working.
Anyway, I'd love to see both of those programs fall flat on their a$$es and die.
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Actaully, the first place I read that sentiment was here, and it is frequently repeated by young freepers.
They will get just what they voted for, and my ashes will be laughing at them.
WOO HOO!
They told me my life expentancy was determined by my genes, and the longer my parents lived the longer I would live. What they didn't tell me was how expensive it was going to be keeping my parents on life support till they were 110.
I think a more reasonable goal is 70, especially since with modern medicine and today's far better understanding of how to maintain good health with a decent diet, good exercise and avoiding overindulgence of alcohol and less people smoking will allow people to live far longer than before.
"maintain good health with a decent diet, good exercise and avoiding overindulgence of alcohol and less people smoking will allow people to live far longer than before."
If I promise to continue to eat fatty foods and booze it up, could I be allowed to retire early?
Socialist-speak for WE NEED MORE DEAD AMERICANS.
"For $2,000 you can build a fine 8 x 10 shack. As you save more money, add onto it. In 5 years you'll have 40 x 50 shack. No mortgage necessary."
I think you and I have obviously lived "in the field" for longer periods of time than most, LOL! It does tend to affect one's thinking about what "housing" truly is. ;)
Very good advice. One can NEVER go wrong, living below their means. :)
Gawd! The thought of working until I'm 85 just astounds me. I learned a long time ago that more "stuff" needs more "money" and more "work" to support it. Forget that nonsense!
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