In 2020, the Census Bureau found 16.9% of the US population was age 65 years or older. Indiana was just a few tenths of a percentage points below that historically high figure. Ten years earlier, in 2010, the figure for the U.S. was 13.1%.
By 2030, it’s expected to be 20.6%, after which the increases are smaller.
With an increasing older population, the Social Security full retirement benefit age has been rising. For those born before 1938, that age was 65. If you were born in ’38, the age was 65 and 2 months.
Each succeeding year, it rose by 2 months until birth year 1942 when it reached 66. Then the full benefit age was held constant for those born 1942 through 1954 (the war years).
Thereafter, the retirement age moved up by two months every birth year until 1960 when it hit 67. It remains unchanged today for later birth years.
We have linked retirement to age. Perhaps it began with the Constitution, which placed minimum age requirements for various federal offices. We applied the minimum concept to military service, to drinking alcoholic beverages, to driving a motor vehicle, to voting, to voluntary sexual activity, and to kindergarten enrollment.
Some people today press for term limits and/or maximum age eligibility for elective and judicial offices. As the older population’s share of the total population expands, we begin to suspect the capability of those “old folks,” those “senior citizens,” those “remnants of yesterday,” those “circling the drain.”
To date, we don’t have an accepted test for competence. Those who continue to teach, practice, compete, or otherwise extend their careers, often are remarkably effective until they die. Others are not.
Many of my friends who have passed several birthdays since they ended lifelong careers have retreated voluntarily from involvement with the world. They have declared themselves “out-of-it” and “passed the baton” to the next generation. They may offer strong opinions and valid options, based on solid experience, but they insist those experiences are “out-of-touch” with current realities.
One may not know how to program a smart TV or navigate the web, but that does not invalidate the application of wisdom and knowledge to the times in which we live.
A collateral waste of human resources is the belief that current circumstances are immutable.
“It won’t happen in my lifetime,” is more than retirement and retreat, it is abject resignation. It is the out-party giving up because the in-party has a “supermajority.” It is abandoning the war because the battle was lost.
If tomorrow is to be better than today, yesterday’s soldiers must not rule themselves out of today’s conflicts. They may not be generals, but they can still inform and inspire the troops.
Morton Marcus is an economist. Reach him at [email protected]. Follow his views and those of John Guy on “Who Gets What?” wherever podcasts are available or at mortonjohn.libsyn.com. Send comments to [email protected].
