Conservative broadcaster and gadfly Ben Shapiro stopped by the peanut gallery this week, where he offered thoughts on retirement and Social Security. He went 0-for-2.
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“No one in the United States should be retiring at 65 years old,” Shapiro, who’s 40, told his 1 million–plus subscribers. “Frankly, I think retirement itself is a stupid idea unless you have some sort of health problem.”
And on Social Security, whose future is now arguably at the heart of the presidential campaign, he brought out that quacking old canard about life expectancy. “Just on a fiscal level and on a logical level,” Shapiro said, “when Franklin Delano Roosevelt established 65 as the retirement age, the average life expectancy in the United States was 63 years old. Today, the average life expectancy in the United States is close to 80.”
The idea that you should be able to retire at 65 and receive Social Security benefits for another 20 years is “crazy talk” and “totally insane,” Shapiro added.
Shapiro’s comments matter because he is highly influential, at least in conservative circles. He is (usually) one of the more articulate, and better informed, voices on the right. And the ideas he’s repeating have plenty of circulation, so they are worth dealing with in detail.
Let’s start with that life-expectancy claim: It gets repeated ad nauseam in the debate over Social Security, to support the idea that the program was never intended to support this many people.
It is grossly misleading. Anyone who has studied social and economic history at all knows full well that the big changes in life expectancy throughout history have mainly been about child mortality.
Hard to believe, but as recently as 100 years ago nearly 10% of American children died before their fifth birthday.
If you don’t believe me, go look at the tables maintained by the federal government. The tables from 1930, relating to the 1920s, are available here.
On page 20, table III-A, you’ll see that for every 100,000 white baby boys born in the U.S. between 1920 and 1929, barely 90,000 were still alive by age 5. More than 7,000 died before their first birthday. Among white baby girls (table III-B, page 22), the numbers were better, but not by much: Just 92,000 were still alive at age 5. Meanwhile, among Black babies the numbers were even worse: Some 13% of Black baby boys in the U.S., and 11% of Black baby girls, died before they turned 5.
The child-mortality rate today? About 1%. (See Table B, Page 4, here. Incidentally, for all references to the current situation, I’ve used the 2019 mortality tables, rather than 2020 or later, to avoid any distortions caused by COVID-19.)
The only reason “average life expectancy” at birth back before World War II was in the 60s was that the numbers were distorted by all these childhood deaths. But these had nothing to do with the economics of Social Security, for the obvious reason that infants do not pay into the system.
More relevant to Social Security is your life expectancy at age 65. And, here, the numbers are very clear. When Franklin Roosevelt and Congress set up Social Security in the late 1930s with a retirement age of 65, an American who made it to 65 could expect, on average, to live another 12 or so years, to age 77.
Don’t believe me? Go to the 1939-41 life tables compiled by the federal government here. Turn to Page 11, “Table J — Life table values for selected specific ages, by sex,” and go down to the section titled “Average future lifetime in years.” Then run your finger down the column headed “1939-41.” You’ll see that, at that time, a white male who was 65 could expect on average to live another 12.07 years, and a white female 13.56 years. The equivalent figures for Black men and women were 12.21 and 13.93 years. (Yes, Black life expectancy at 65 was apparently slightly higher than white life expectancy. The CDC confirmed this to me via email. There is some debate among social historians about the explanation.)
So, to recap: When Social Security was set up with a retirement age of 65, there was full expectation that people would live well beyond that age and would spend many years drawing checks.
Meanwhile, as for Shapiro’s argument that retirement is “stupid”: There speaks someone who loves his job, and has a good one. I am not criticizing; Shapiro works hard and is good, usually, at what he does. He is successful and deserves his success. I would not be surprised if he wanted to work until his dying day. (Many in the media do: Woody Allen is still making movies in his late 80s — not, presumably, because needs the money. I can sympathize.) Joe Biden doesn’t want to hang it up, and neither does Donald Trump.
But how many people are this lucky? Many, probably most, hold jobs that are miserable, or boring, or physically demanding — or all three. Even those who hold good jobs often can’t wait to quit because of the office politics, or because of the demands imposed on them by the overpaid and overpromoted overhead.
The pity about Shapiro’s simplistic comments is that they obscure better, more solid arguments.
For example: No, the average life expectancy for adults was not under 65 when Social Security was set up. But, yes, average life expectancy for adults has risen significantly since the late 1930s. Today, for example, someone who’s 65 can, on average, expect to live another 20 years or so, depending on their sex, ethnicity and socioeconomic profile, a.k.a. “class.” (See here, Page 3, Table A.) That’s seven or eight years more than when Social Security was first set up. The full retirement age under the program has already been raised, from 65 to 67. But it is not unreasonable to argue that it should keep rising in the future.
Also, it isn’t fully appreciated how many of Social Security’s financial problems are caused not by the current level of benefits but the expected rise in future benefits over and above inflation. And this is especially true for those at the top of the wage tree. For example, according to Tax Policy Center calculations, a high-earning middle-class couple who retire in 2060 may be on track for initial Social Security benefits of $85,000 a year (in today’s money). That’s 50% more, in real terms, than a similar high-earning couple would get if they retired today. Yet we also know that such people are likely to live longest after retirement, and will typically collect many more checks than those in the middle or the bottom of the wage system.
It’s not unreasonable to consider that when looking at how to balance the system’s books. Especially when the retirement system has to deal with many competing needs — including a compelling case for boosting Social Security benefits for the poorest seniors.
Finally, it would be a great idea to encourage people to keep working after 65 (or 67) if they want to, or can stand to. The system overall benefits if everyone who wants to die with their boots on keeps working as long as they can. On the other hand, many people are looking forward to retirement, and they’re certainly not stupid.