The National Bureau of Economic Research has done a study on increases in life expectancy and retirement benefits in the United States. A few years ago when this study was begun there was much talk of increasing the full retirement age for Social Security benefits. That talk has mostly died away. It's politically impossible now. It's hard to imagine it becoming politically possible in the foreseeable future. Perhaps the least unlikely change would go in the opposite direction -- lowering the age limit for Medicare from 65 to 50 or 55. There is a fair chance of that happening should Democrats control the White House and Congress after the 2020 elections or even if Democrats control Congress after the 2018 elections.
The study points out what was already well known, that while there has been an increase in overall life expectancy, those with lifetime earnings in the lowest 40% are experiencing little or no increase in life expectancy. This is increasing the gap in lifetime benefits between those with the highest and lowest lifetime income by $130,000.
The study contains this interesting graph (click on it to see it full size):
To explain this, the 1930 cohort is people born in 1930 and the 1960 cohort is people born in 1960. Quintile 1 is the 20% of people who have the lowest lifetime earnings while quintile 5 is the 20% of people who have the highest lifetime earnings.
Note that there was essentially no change between the 1930 cohort and the 1960 cohort. People make silly arguments about how different generations of people are vastly different. I've never seen that.
Note that poor people are much more likely to draw disability benefits than wealthy people. It shouldn't be hard to understand why. The same factors that make people poor make them more likely to become disabled. Low cognitive abilities, low educational attainments and serious chronic mental illness all predispose to both poverty and disability. Also, poverty leads to poor health care access which also predisposes to disability. None of this has anything to do with rural versus urban poverty. There's just more poverty these days in rural areas than urban areas.
Your conclusion that "The same factors that make people poor make them more likely to become disabled. Low cognitive abilities, low educational attainments and serious chronic mental illness all predispose to both poverty and disability." A very broad and questionable statement. Perhaps you want to imply racial aspects as well in this mix? How about generational tendencies? How about the impact of these types of issues affecting the disabled populations in Europe, Asia, Africa, or South America. It would be wiser for you to post your answer to the dilemma of what came first, the chicken or the egg, than wade into these waters.
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