I tend to agree with the premise of this Times article, that lifespans are increasing and therefore the retirement age should be a little later (although as I've written before there are big potential problems with making assumptions about life expectancy). One curious thing about the argument is that nobody seems to have any information on whether the quality of life is increasing along with the the life expectancy. From a Social Security standpoint it doesn't do you any good to live longer if you're feeble, inactive, and relegated to assisted living or a nursing home -- ie if you're no more capable of work. Some kind of study on quality of life vis-a-vis life expectancy this would cast a lot of light on the issue.
Also, in my experience working at Social Security, there were many people who ended up "retiring" not because they had planned to retire or reached full retirement age, but because they simply could not find work anymore. Whether this had to do with truly diminishing ability, age discrimination (which is surely rampant), or the recession I couldn't say. But raising the retirement age might have a catastrophic effect for these people.
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