What ever happened to the idea of retiring with dignity and security?
LYNN PARRAMORE, Institute For New Economic Thinking
Not so in other rich countries like
Germany, France, and Canada, where robust public pensions and healthcare
systems offer retirees stability and dignity. After a lifetime of hard work,
older citizens in the U.S. find their reward is merely scraping by, as savings
diminish under the weight of soaring medical costs in the most expensive
healthcare system in the developed world.
The solution from America’s elites? Suck it
up and work longer.
An example of this mindset appeared in
a New York Times op-ed by
C. Eugene Steuerle of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and Glenn Kramon, a
Stanford Business School lecturer. The two accused older folks of robbing
economic resources from the young through Social Security and Medicare—never
mind that workers fund these programs with their own lifelong payroll
contributions.
They paint a picture of 65-year-old
Americans jauntily playing “pickleball daily” and jet-setting “far and wide,”
proposing to increase the age to collect Social Security and Medicare benefits,
essentially forcing future retirees to work longer. (Curiously, they overlook
how this move robs young people—too young to vote—of future retirement years.
This echoes 1983, when the Reagan administration and Congress pushed the Social
Security age from 65 to 67, impacting Gen X before they could even vote on it).
Steuerle and Kramon prop up their plan with studies that extol the health and wellbeing perks of working into old age, adding that “each generation lives longer” and therefore, it’s a patriotic duty for the elderly to stay on the job.
Are we all really living longer? Let’s
first point out that Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, noted for
their research in health and economics, recently showed that
many Americans are not, in fact, enjoying extended lives.
As they stated in their own New York Times
op-ed, those without college degrees are “scarred by death and a staggeringly
shorter life span.” According to their investigation, the expected
lifespan for this group has been falling since 2010. By 2021, people without
college degrees were expected to live to about 75, nearly 8.5 years shorter
than their college-educated counterparts.
Overall life expectancy in America dropped
in 2020 and 2021, with increases in mortality across the leading causes of
death and among all ages, not just due to COVID-19. In August 2022, data confirmed that Americans are dying younger across
all demographics. Again, the U.S. is an outlier. It was one of two developed
countries where life expectancy did not bounce back in the second year of the pandemic.
So the argument that everyone is living
longer greatly stretches the truth—unless, of course, you happen to be rich: A
Harvard study revealed that the wealthiest Americans enjoy a life
expectancy over a decade longer than their
poorest counterparts.
Could the idea that working into our
seventies and beyond boosts our health and well-being hold true? Obviously, for
those in physically demanding roles, such as construction or mining, prolonged
work is likely to lead to a higher risk of injury, accidents, and wearing down
health-wise. But what about everybody else? What if you have a desk job?
Wouldn’t it be great to get out there, do something meaningful, and interact
with people, too?
Perhaps it’s easy for people like Steuerle
and Kramon to imagine older people working in secure, dignified positions that
might offer health benefits into old age – after all, those are the types of
positions they know best.
But the reality is different. Economist
Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School for Social Research, focuses
on the economic security of older workers and flaws in U.S. retirement systems
in her new book, Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy.
She calls those praising the health perks
of working longer “oddballs” – those fortunate folks in cushy positions who
have a lot of autonomy and purpose. Like lawmakers or tenured professors, for
example.
She points out that academic researchers
often base their theories about the benefits of working longer on a
hypothetical person who just tacked on a few extra years in the same position,
noting that researchers often make the faulty assumption that people are not
only living longer, but can also easily choose to work longer, keep their jobs
without facing pay cuts, and continue stacking up savings into later life.
That’s not really how it plays out in real
life for most folks. Ghilarducci found that most people don’t actually get to
decide when they retire, noting that “the verb ‘retire’ isn’t a verb that
really belongs to the agency of the worker – it’s the employers’ choice.”
Retirement often means somebody above you telling you it’s time to go.
You’re ousted—laid off or pushed out
because your productivity’s slipping or your skills are aging like last year’s
tech. Or simply because of biases against older workers. Age discrimination is
a huge issue, with
two-thirds of job seekers aged 45 to 74 reporting it. In fact, people trying to
find a job say they encounter significant biases as early as age 35.
For the high-tech and entertainment industries, this is particularly true.
So there’s that.
There’s also the fact that continuing to
work in an unfulfilling job might be hazardous to your health. The reality is,
a lot of us are grinding in jobs that are stressful and insecure, and that
constant stress ties into a whole host of health issues — hypertension, heart
problems, messed up digestion, and a weaker immune system, not to mention it
can kickstart or worsen mental health troubles like depression and anxiety.
Many are stuck in what anthropologist David
Graeber memorably dubbed “bullshit jobs” — roles
that feel meaningless and draining. Graeber described these jobs as a form of
‘spiritual violence,’ and found them linked to heightened anxiety, depression,
and overall misery among workers. His research found strong evidence that
seeing your job as useless deeply impacts your psychological well-being.
The link between job dissatisfaction and
poor health has been found to be significant in study after study. Unrewarding work can demotivate people
from staying active, eating well, or sleeping regularly, potentially leading to
obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other health issues. In contrast, retiring from
such a job could free up time and energy for wellness activities, enjoyable
hobbies, and a healthier lifestyle overall.
Ghilarducci points out that
reward-to-effort ratios, crucial for job satisfaction, are declining due to
factors like stagnant real wages. She also highlights the problem of
subordination, explaining that it can be “lethal” to remain in a job where you
lack control over the content or pace of your work. According to her, such
factors can lead to higher morbidity and lower mortality rates.
Okay, what about social engagement? That’s
crucial for seniors, right? True, but demanding or unfulfilling jobs can make
it hard to find the time and energy to socialize, leading to isolation and
loneliness, which are major factors in declining mental health and quality of
life for the elderly.
Also, when talking about delaying
retirement, we can’t ignore cognitive decline. Sure, working longer might keep
your mind sharp if the job is stimulating. However, research indicates the
opposite for dull jobs.
Florida State University researchers found that
not only can tedious work accelerate cognitive decline, leading to increased
stress and reduced life satisfaction, but “dirty” work does as well. They show
that jobs in unclean environments with exposure to chemicals, mold, lead, or
loud noises significantly impact brain health as we age.
Even university professors can suffer the
effects of dirty jobs: North Carolina State University has
recently come under fire for knowingly keeping faculty and
staff working for decades in a building contaminated with PCBs, resulting in
dire health consequences, including nearly 200 cases of cancer among those
exposed.
Finally, it’s not a coincidence that those talking about raising the age for Social Security and Medicare are usually white men. They would suffer less from it than women, especially women of color.
Women typically outlive men but earn less over their lifetimes, which
already means smaller Social Security checks. It’s even tougher for Black women
who often earn way less than their white peers and are more likely to have
unstable jobs with skimpy benefits.
Plus, women frequently take breaks from
their careers for caregiving, shaving off years of paid work and further
slicing their Social Security benefits. Pushing the retirement age higher
forces women, especially Black women, to either toil longer in poor-quality
jobs or retire without enough funds, making them more vulnerable to poverty and
health problems as they get older.
Ghilarducci observes that for women in
low-paying jobs with little control and agency, “working longer can really
hasten their death, and the flip side of that is that retirement for these
women really helps them.”
Bottom line: The whole “work longer, live
healthier” spiel doesn’t fly for most. In the U.S., the well-off might be
milking the joys of extended careers, but lower-income folks, particularly
women and people of color, often endure the slog of thankless jobs that
negatively impact their health and well-being.
Elites shout from their comfortable
positions that we need to push retirement further back as if it’s the magic fix
to all economic woes. But when such people fantasize about happy seniors
thriving at work, they’re missing the harsh reality many face—painful, boring,
insecure jobs that speed death.
The myth that we’re all living longer and
healthier is just that—a myth belied by life expectancy stats showing not
everyone’s in the same boat. What America desperately needs is a beefed-up,
fair Social Security and Medicare system that serves all Americans, not just
the ones who can afford to retire without a worry. No one should be stuck
choosing between a crappy job and retiring into penury.
Yet Republicans are on the warpath against
Social Security and Medicare. Senator Mike Lee has explicitly stated his goal to
completely eliminate Social Security, aiming to “pull it up by
the roots, and get rid of it.” His fellow Republicans are enthusiastically
getting the ball rolling: House Republicans have released a new proposal to
weaken Social Security by raising the retirement age.
For his part, former and possible future
president Donald Trump indicates a willingness to consider cuts to Medicare and
Social Security, despite previously criticizing his primary rivals on the
issue, who were almost wall to wall demanding drastic cutbacks.
Democratic lawmakers typically show more
support for Social Security and Medicare in public, though their track record
has not fully alleviated concerns about the present and future vulnerability of
these programs.
In his recent State of the Union speech,
President Biden advocated for the expansion and enhancement of Social Security
and Medicare, declaring that “If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or
Medicare or raise the retirement age, I will stop them!” But it’s important to
keep in mind that he supported raising the retirement age during
the 1980s and again in 2005.
Polling shows that voters, whether
Democrats or Republicans, do not want to cut these programs.
Actually, they want to expand Social Security and Medicare. That’s because
those who face the realities of daily life understand that working endlessly is
a cruel and unreasonable – not to mention unhealthy — expectation that no
society should endorse. The idea that America can’t afford to do this is
outlandish when the evidence is so clear that
American billionaires pay historically low tax rates that are now lower
than those for ordinary workers.
What America can’t afford is the
super-wealthy and their paid representatives working the rest of us to death.
LYNN PARRAMORE is
Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. She is also
a frequent contributor to Reuters, Al Jazeera, Salon, Huffington Post, and
other outlets. Her first book of cultural history, Reading the Sphinx (Palgrave
Macmillan) was named a "Notable Scholarly Book for 2008" by the
Chronicle of Higher Education.