Social security is designed to provide a minimum degree of security upon which a worker builds.

[Igel]

49. Lots will be alive in 30 years.

In 30 years I'll be 83. That's pretty much average life expectancy for somebody my age. I'm white, so that would push it a bit higher, but male, so that would pull it back down. The actual number is more like 81, but it's not like we'll all die off when we hit the average. Two years past the average probably 40-45% of us will still be alive--and that's assuming no increase in life expectancy since the numbers I'm using were produced (2008: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_03.pdf , pdf page 53ff).

And there are boomers younger than me. There won't be many of the first few years of the boomers, but from later years there'll be millions. (But wiser actuaries than either of us know this and have nifty equations and formulas for it all. They differ in details, but not in the big picture.)

Lessons:

1. Don't confuse life expectancy at birth (a relatively easy number to find and fling around) with expectation of life at a given age. Life expectancy at birth is currently around 77 years and change for the average American.

But in 2008 the life expectancy for black male then aged 65 was estimated at 15.4 years, so that average BM's life expectancy was 80.4 years, higher than the average life expectancy. Remember that black males are usually at or near the bottom of the life expectancy charts. For white females it was 85 years. (Notice how expectation of life figures narrow with age.)