Low-Income Americans Will Need To Regularly Work Into Their Eighties: Study

If you were thinking of retiring in your sixties, think again. And according to a new study, even seventy is pushing it.

The study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, entitled “The Impact of Deferring Retirement Age on Retirement Income Adequacy,” says the future of the American worker, particularly those in lower-income brackets, is one that requires working much later into life.

Only by retiring at 75 years old would a majority of those in the lowest income quartile -- defined as earning below $11,700 annually -- have half a chance of not running out of money during retirement, the study finds. Working until 85 years old doesn't completely secure Americans, either. Indeed, a majority of workers that age making less than $31,000 annually still have a roughly 20 percent chance of running out of funds, the report finds.

Even when accounting for benefits provided by Medicare and Social Security, early retirement remains little more than a pipe dream, the report finds.

The issue relates to the simple fact of people living longer. In 1940, only an estimated 9 million Americans were 65 years old or older, or approximately 6.8 percent of the population, according to the Social Security Administration. By 2000, the last time the study was taken, 34.9 million Americans were 65 years or older or older, or approximately 12 percent of the population according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And by 2050, that number is expected to increase to 21 percent.

"The full retirement age would have to increase to 73 for adults to have the same expected years of remaining life in retirement today as in 1940," Urban Institute senior research associate Melissa Favreault and senior fellow Richard Johnson note in their research, cited by CNN.

Comments

[kenyng1]

04:02 PM on 06/14/2011

Wow pleanty of talk, pleanty of opinions!!

Wake me when we start to physically form groups to address the issues instead of talking about it!

How can a country like Libya with a loony dictator give it's people better nedical care than America??

Americans need a leader to galvinize us to take back the rights our ancestors fought and died for.

We need another Martin Luther King to follow and march on Washington to peacefully demand our rights!!

Voting out the current congressmen and senators will accomplish nothing, they will only be replaced by like minded bureaucrats!!

[StopMakingSense2]

01:56 PM on 06/14/2011

And since republicans will make sure they don't have health care it's work until you drop since few will see 80. Now republicans can claim mission accomplished! Now how do we make them work without paying them? Hmmmm have to get our think tanks going on that one next...

[fortressfountain]

11:17 AM on 06/14/2011

What is the difference in working for low wages or collecting ss at 62? At least have an easier life for yourself.

[Patriot86]

09:54 AM on 06/14/2011

Most won't live that long...being poor in America is a terminal condition these days.

[LiberalEastTexan]

09:11 AM on 06/14/2011

Very angry old people facing death with nothing to lose and no reason to live - plus easy access to firearms - is going to make for an interesting social experiment.

Perhaps most will simply take their own life, but some percentage of them will figure, "Why not take that SOB [fill in the blank] with me?"

[DixieMelody]

12:43 PM on 06/14/2011

Projecting a scenario like that as becoming commonplace is typical of why we think Texans are all nuts.

[Loodis]

08:07 AM on 06/14/2011

This is OUTRAGEOUS. 1% of the US population holds most of the wealth, due mostly to the largest tax breaks for the wealthy George Bush and his wealthy cronies gave themselves, the rest of us are loosing everything. We've lost our homes, our jobs, our cars, and much of the stable lifestyle that many of us had for years. It's difficult enough to find a job at 50 much less 80. We will all be camping out as many homeless veterans do on the sidewalk in front of the White House.

[DixieMelody]

12:50 PM on 06/14/2011

Bush implemented the tax breaks . . . Obama extended them.

Red or Blue doesn't really matter, because NONE of them represent "the bottom" 95% of us.

We are (and have been for the last 10 years) existing in the country of Taxation Without Representation.

[plaidsportcoat]

04:57 AM on 06/14/2011

slaves

[Dbos]

12:01 AM on 06/14/2011

Low income brings about many things, mainly crime;I grew up poor, in a tough neighborhood, lots of poverty, some didn't worry about having a job to get money they just took yours.

[procrustes13]

11:20 PM on 06/13/2011

This is the worst outrage. There's more wealth then ever but just because some billionaires are said to have the right to enough money to buy the government people have to do back breaking labour until they die like happened in the 19th century. This is a huge crime. The punishment for these people responsible cannot be too agnosing, too severe. What happened to Hugh Le Despenser the Younger is too good for them.

[Clairvoyant Evangelist]

07:57 PM on 06/13/2011

Under the new "Affordable Retirement" plan, instead of retiring at age 65 workers will be required to get forms from the post office and sign up for a "Selection Service" program. Each month respected members of the nation's insurance company community will go through the lists and select names. Those named will be sent letters advising them that they have been selected to be euthanized in event they should quit their jobs, retire or be made redundant.

Those selected who cease working will be collected at depots and from those will be sent on to 'boot-camps', where they will be booted on, into the great beyond, probably to be rendered into protein-rich cattle-food, along with those, of all ages, who will have been rendered redundant by their "Affordable-Healthcare" providers, or "previous-providers.

Periodically medal-presentation ceremonies will be organized at which next of kin of ones who went on beyond with greatest good grace, to preserve the tax-breaks and low upper-bracket tax rates that make America what it is, the envy of the well-heeled and tycoon around the world.

[loki]

07:14 PM on 06/13/2011

where are the Conservatives on this page?

[regulargal]

11:40 AM on 06/14/2011

They are reading this story with great satisfaction and approval.

[G8RH8R]

07:12 PM on 06/13/2011

They want all of us middle to lower class to work until we die. Pay in and get nothing. That is their New Deal.

[GetAbike]

05:12 PM on 06/13/2011

Seems like all the stories- Financial, Ecological, Sociological, Etc. - are all saying basically the same thing-
"Sh**t just ain't workin' out".

[madkoz]

04:32 PM on 06/13/2011

Just think how great it will be to take the kids to Disney and get to see grandma and grandpa working the concession stand at the same time. Talk about added value.

[SuperBenFranklin]

04:16 PM on 06/13/2011

people in their 70-80s are living off pensions.

people in their 40s are screwed.

401k was a huge scam.

[SF TKF]

05:08 PM on 06/13/2011

Yep.

[loki]

07:15 PM on 06/13/2011

some in the 70-80 are living off pensions. If you forgot, in the 1980 and early 90s, corporations , with the help of their puppet gov, was able to absorb the millions / billions in many pensions and now those who worked and paid into said pensions, get next to nothing, or nothing at all.