Fatal attraction? Access to early retirement and mortality

The BBC reports France's Hollande to lower state pension age to 60 New French president Francois Hollande has unveiled details of a plan to lower the retirement age to 60 for some workers - a key election pledge. His predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, had faced strong opposition when he raised the retirement age by two years to 62. The move in 2010 sparked weeks of strikes across the country, mainly by public service workers.

Larry Mishel writes in with another argument for why raising the Social Security age makes much more sense for affluent individuals who work in knowledge-oriented industries than for lower-income people whose jobs require more physical labor. If the argument is that life expectancy is rocketing upwards, and that retirement shouldn't grow along with it, it's important to point out that the increases in life expectancy aren't being shared equally:

The new retirement age is getting younger for many Americans who can least afford to retire.A new study released Tuesday by Prudential finds African-Americans retire earlier than the general population on average, despite significantly lower retirement savings. About 25 percent of African-Americans surveyed expect to retire before age 60, compared to 20 percent of the general population.

FORTUNE -- The first wave of Baby Boomers turned 65 earlier this year. Once, that was the official retirement age, the birthday after which you could spend entire Tuesdays on the golf course with no judgment. It was also the age at which people would start to look askance at the office. Indeed, a broad swath of older workers once faced mandatory retirement age policies, and until this spring, Great Britain had a "Default Retirement Age" (DRA) of 65.

Determining exactly what needs to be saved for retirement is tricky. Basically it is something that needs to be adjusted based on how things go (savings accumulated, saving rate, planned retirement date, investing returns, predicted investing returns, government policy, tax rates, etc.). The simple idea is start by saving 15% of salary by the time you are 30. Then adjust over time. If you start earlier maybe you can get by with 12%…

John Leland writing in the NYT relays an excellent point form Teresa Ghilarducci about raising the Social Security retirement age: “People who need to retire early — and they need to — are folks that start working in their late teens, whereas people who are promoting raising the retirement age are people who were in graduate school or professional school and got into jobs that would logically take them into their late 60s and 70s,” she said.

In their efforts to block health care reform, politicians often claim that the U.S. has the best health care system in the world.  As such, we shouldn't tinker with it.

Eric Hanushek, Susanne Link, Ludger Woessmann, 9 January 2012We are increasingly told that school decisions are best made by head teachers who have a better knowledge of the demands on schools and the capacity of their staff. This column presents new research suggesting that local autonomy can indeed work, but only in countries where public examinations can help to keep teachers on their toes. Full Article: Independent schools: A luxury for the developed world?