{"id":3221,"date":"2010-11-15T11:02:38","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T16:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=3221"},"modified":"2010-11-16T10:17:21","modified_gmt":"2010-11-16T15:17:21","slug":"should-social-security-benefits-be-adjusted-by-a-persons-race-and-gender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/11\/15\/should-social-security-benefits-be-adjusted-by-a-persons-race-and-gender\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Social Security benefits be adjusted by a person’s race and gender?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the big discussions underway right now is how to shore up the finances of the hugely popular — and, some would argue, essential — Social Security program.<\/p>\n

Currently, people can choose to begin receiving some benefits as early as age 62.\u00a0 Under various reform proposals, the age at which we begin receiving those checks will climb to 67, 69 or even 70.<\/p>\n

This sounds reasonable.\u00a0 Americans are living a lot longer, right?\u00a0 Surely a program created to support people for a few years shouldn’t be expected to sustain them for a decade or longer.<\/p>\n

The trouble, of course, is that Americans of different races have very different life expectancies.\u00a0 Women are the big “problem” here, because on average they live to be more than 80 years old.<\/p>\n

On average, a white woman who reaches the age of sixty-five can expected to live another two decades<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A black man, by contrast, is likely to live fewer than 15 years more.<\/p>\n

That 25% disparity equates to a huge amount of Federal dollars.\u00a0 But there’s also a fairness issue here.<\/p>\n

Some of these proposals would have us raise the Social Security eligibility age beyond the life expectancy of the average black man.<\/p>\n

Arguably, given our current economic realities, this is a population that can be expected to need retirement support.<\/p>\n

But some of the “solution” now on the table would mean that many if not most African Americans who pay Social Security tax will never receive a dime back.<\/p>\n

So what do you think?\u00a0 Should the realities of race, gender and life expectancy factor into a real-world discussion of retirement programs, or not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the big discussions underway right now is how to shore up the finances […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3222,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221\/revisions\/3222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}