DMK president MK Stalin on Thursday hit out at Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami for raising the retirement age of government employees to 60 years, saying the announcement was made with an eye on the forthcoming assembly elections in the state. Though increasing the retirement age of state government employees was welcome, it appears that the announcement was made with the elections in mind, Stalin alleged.
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“Raising the retirement age is welcome, albeit the announcement made for the election,” the DMK leader said in a Facebook post on Thursday. He said the Chief Minister should have fixed the age criteria of 60 years when he had increased the retirement age to 59 from 58 years in May last year.
The upward revision of retirement age for State government employees will affect opportunities for younger generation in getting employment in government departments, said K. Balakrishnan, state secretary, CPI (M) on Thursday.
Addressing journalists in Thanjavur, he said the State government, which was struggling to settle the retirement benefits of the State Transport Corporation employees, had announced that the retirement age for government employees would be increased to 60 years. This was nothing but an attempt to evade its responsibility of shouldering the financial burden of settling the retirement benefits of those due to retire from government service during this year.
Gov. Phil Murphy said he will think about increasing the mandatory retirement age of New Jersey judges beyond the age of 70.
“You do have the reality. You’ve got a 78-year-old president who succeeded a 74-year-old president, so this is not a blip anymore,” Murphy said in response to an inquiry from the New Jersey Globe on Friday.
When New Jersey approved a new State Constitution in 1947 that forced judges to retire at 70, the average life expectancy of men in the United States – there was only one woman on the bench at the time, Libby Bernstein Sachar in Union County – was 62.
DMK president M.K. Stalin on Thursday said Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami had increased the retirement age of the State government employees with an eye on the Assembly election.
In a statement in Chennai, he said although it was welcome, the decision could have been taken last year when the retirement age was raised to 59.
At present, people aged 55 can access their retirement funds but the age limit is likely to increase by two years under plans laid out by the Treasury.
The Treasury consultation said the government intended to legislate to increase the normal minimum pension age to age 57 on 6 April 2028.
Increasing the full retirement age for Social Security decreased the early retirement rate by about 30% for men and 20% for women, according to the paper published in January. The paper, “The Effect of Early Claiming Benefit Reduction on Retirement Rates,” was written by Damir Cosic, senior research associate, and C. Eugene Steuerle, fellow and the Richard B. Fisher chair, at the Urban Institute. They used data from the Current Population Survey to compare the effect of FRA reforms on early retirement rates.
There’s no retirement age in the NFL, and that’s a good thing for Super Bowl-bound Kansas City and Tampa Bay.
Andy Reid and Bruce Arians are two of the league’s five oldest coaches. Reid is closing in on 63; Arians turned 68 last October. They have a combined 55 years of NFL experience and spent nearly another three decades working at the college level.
Neither seems close to calling it a career. Instead, they’re showing that bald heads and gray facial hair might be a better choice than young and spry at football’s most important leadership position. These guys might just be getting started, too.
Abstract Workers have the option of claiming Social Security retirement benefits at any age between 62 and 70, with later claiming resulting in higher monthly benefits. These higher monthly benefits reflect an actuarial adjustment designed to keep lifetime benefits equal, for an individual with average life expectancy, regardless of when benefits are claimed. The actuarial adjustments, however, are decades old. Since then, interest rates have declined; life expectancy has increased; and longevity improvements have been much greater for high earners than low earners. This paper explores how changes in longevity and interest rates have affected the fairness of the actuarial adjustment over time and how the disparity in life expectancy affects the equity across the income distribution. It also looks at the impact of these developments on the costs of the program and the progressivity of benefits.
The paper found that: • The increases in life expectancy and the decline in interest rates argue for smaller reductions for early claiming and a smaller delayed retirement credit for later claiming. • Specifically, the benefit at 62 should equal 77.5 percent, as opposed to 70.0 percent, of the full age-67 benefit, and the benefit at 70 should equal 119.9 percent, instead of 124.0 percent, of the full benefit. • The outdated actuarial adjustments are a modest moneymaker for the program – about $1.9 billion in 2018, with most of the gains coming from those claiming at 62, who are typically lower earners. Surprisingly, the correlations between earnings and life expectancy and between earnings and claiming behavior have only modest implications for both the cost and progressivity of Social Security benefits. • Finally, the cost and distributional effects of earnings-related life expectancy and claiming cannot be addressed through the actuarial adjustments for early and late claiming. They reflect the fact that high earners get their large benefits for a long time and low earners get their more modest benefits for a shorter time.
Authors: Andrew G. Biggs, Anqi Chen, and Alicia H. Munnell
Publication Date: January 2021
Publication Site: Center for Retirement Research at Boston College
Workers have the option of claiming Social Security retirement benefits at any age between 62 and 70, with later claiming resulting in higher monthly benefits. These higher monthly benefits reflect an actuarial adjustment designed to keep lifetime benefits equal, for an individual with average life expectancy, regardless of when benefits are claimed. The actuarial adjustments, however, are decades old. Since then, interest rates have declined; life expectancy has increased; and longevity improvements have been much greater for high earners than low earners. This paper explores how changes in longevity and interest rates have affected the fairness of the actuarial adjustment over time and how the disparity in life expectancy affects the equity across the income distribution. It also looks at the impact of these developments on the costs of the program and the progressivity of benefits.
The paper found that:
The increases in life expectancy and the decline in interest rates argue for smaller reductions for early claiming and a smaller delayed retirement credit for later claiming.
Specifically, the benefit at 62 should equal 77.5 percent, as opposed to 70.0 percent, of the full age-67 benefit, and the benefit at 70 should equal 119.9 percent, instead of 124.0 percent, of the full benefit.
The outdated actuarial adjustments are a modest moneymaker for the program – about $1.9 billion in 2018, with most of the gains coming from those claiming at 62, who are typically lower earners. Surprisingly, the correlations between earnings and life expectancy and between earnings and claiming behavior have only modest implications for both the cost and progressivity of Social Security benefits.
Finally, the cost and distributional effects of earnings-related life expectancy and claiming cannot be addressed through the actuarial adjustments for early and late claiming. They reflect the fact that high earners get their large benefits for a long time and low earners get their more modest benefits for a shorter time.
The policy implications of the findings are:
Increases in life expectancy and the decline in interest rates suggest smaller reductions for early claiming and a smaller delayed retirement credit for later claiming.
Accounting for differential mortality would involve changing benefits, and is not a problem that can be solved by tinkering with the actuarial adjustments.