While life expectancy in the US continues to improve, says the report by researchers at University of Washington in Seattle and Imperial College, London, it is not increasing as quickly as in other Western countries, so the gap is widening.

“The researchers suggest that the relatively low life expectancies in the US cannot be explained by the size of the nation, racial diversity, or economics,” says the document, which ranks the US 38th in the world for life expectancy overall.

“Instead, the authors point to high rates of obesity, tobacco use and other preventable risk factors for an early death as the leading drivers of the gap between the US and other nations.”

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Overall, the proposal would cut Social Security benefits by $112 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It would cut government pensions and veterans’ benefits by $24 billion over the same time period if adopted for them.

Reaction from the president’s own party was swift Thursday, raising questions about whether Obama can keep Democrats on board if he agrees to cuts in Social Security. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said her caucus won’t support any package that includes Social Security cuts.

“Do not consider Social Security a piggy bank for giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country,” Pelosi said. “We are not going to balance the budget on the backs of America’s seniors.”

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The major advanced economies should not just be worried about Greece, it said, they should be worried about themselves. If the huge debt levels of the major economies prompt the world financial markets to wonder if those debts will be honoured, so that the markets take a set against sovereign debt in general, the majors, too, will be in big trouble.

But as the British economist Dr Diane Coyle reminds us in her new book, The Economics of Enough, it is worse than that.

We have known for years that the major advanced economies are facing immense pressure on their budgets from the ageing of their populations. They are committed to generous pension payments and healthcare spending for their retiring baby boomers at a time when, for many countries, their populations will be falling.

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While most of the 76 million baby boomers are no longer caring for their children, more and more of them are playing the role of caretakerfor an older generation: their parents. But how ready are they for this role?

A new survey by Home Instead Senior Care, an in-home care company, shows that an alarming number of those caring for their aging parents are under-prepared.

Almost half of those surveyed by Home Instead said they couldn’t name a single drug their parents took. Also, 34 percent said they don’t know whether their parents have a safe deposit box, and 36 percent said they don’t know where their parents’ financial information is located.

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Swiss voters rejected a proposal to ban assisted suicide and suicide tourism in the Canton (political district) of Zurich.

In a referendum on Sunday, about 85% of voters in Zurich rejected a proposal to end legalized assisted suicide while about 78% rejected a proposal to stop the practice of suicide tourism by foreigners in their Canton.

Two conservative political parties, the Evangelical People’s Party and the Federal Democratic Union, supported the referendum, promoting palliative care as the best option to care for seriously ill people at the end of their lives. The groups argued that the presence of assisted suicide clinics run by the Exit and Dignitas organizations, and their promotion of suicide tourism, damages Zurich’s image.

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The problems of old age (chronic illness, outliving savings, loneliness) are real, but age by itself is not an indicator of need. The blanket defense of existing Social Security and Medicare isn’t “liberal” or “progressive.” It’s simply a political expedient with ruinous consequences. It enlarges budget deficits and forces an unfair share of adjustment ”” higher taxes, lower spending ”” on workers and other government programs. This is the morality of the ballot box.

People do not lose their obligations to the larger society by turning 65. We need to refocus these programs on their original purposes. Social Security was intended to prevent poverty, not finance recipients’ extra cable channels. Medicare provides peace of mind as well as health insurance; wealthier recipients can afford to pay more for their peace of mind. Burden-sharing needs to include the elderly. This is the crux of the budget problem.

Facing it is both a moral and financial imperative. With the 2012 election looming, major overhauls of these programs seem unlikely. Still, more modest changes (slow increases in eligibility ages, added taxation of Social Security benefits, costlier Medicare for upscale beneficiaries) could produce significant savings. If even these are absent, the meaning will be plain: Old stereotypes continue to trump new realities.

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According to my calculations based on government data, such [typical] married couples [as I cite in my example] will begin receiving monthly Social Security checks that will, on average, total about $550,000 after inflation. They will receive health-care services paid for by Medicare that, on average, will total another $450,000 after inflation. The benefactors will be a generation of younger workers who are trying to support themselves and their families while paying taxes to finance the rest of government spending.

We cannot even remotely afford to make good on these promised benefits. Although our system of personal liberty, free enterprise and limited government has made us an affluent and upwardly mobile people, we are not yet a nation of [wealthy benefactor] John Beresford Tiptons.

The existence of so many million-dollar couples is not the result of elected officials carefully weighing the needs of senior citizens against the financial ability of younger workers to meet these needs. Rather, it is the result of decades of separate legislative actions by both political parties to liberalize retirement and health-care benefits, the sum total of which no one has bothered to calculate.

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Medicare, the U.S. health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, and the Social Security trust for the disabled and retirees are running out of money sooner than the government had projected.

While Medicare won’t have sufficient funds to pay full benefits starting in 2024, five years earlier than last year’s estimate, Social Security’s cash to pay full benefits runs short in 2036, a year sooner than the 2010 projection, the U.S. government said today in an annual report.

Both forecasts were affected by a slower-than-anticipated economic recovery, the government said. The estimates for funding add urgency to talks between Democrats and Republicans on ways to cut spending to reduce the U.S. budget deficit.

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[MARK SHIELDS] I mean [the Republicans] want to go after the social programs. And each time, they take this election win as a mandate to do it, and they end up…

DAVID BROOKS: Well, but I can say, on the substance, they are right each time. I mean…

JIM LEHRER: You think it is courageous to do that?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I mean, as I said, your average Medicare enrollee, average income, making I don’t know what it is, $50,000 a year, is paying in $145,000 over the lifetime into the system, taking out $450,000.

Well, there is a big gap there. And that is unsustainable. And so the $450,000 has to be brought down over time. And they are absolutely right to try to bring it down. It just happens to be extremely unpopular to try to talk about that.

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For many old people ”” long before they become mortally ill ”” that prolonged dwindling is a worsening nightmare: a time of maltreatment in geriatric wards, lying on their bedsores in urine and excrement, of dependence on indifferent foreign minders in expensive care homes, a period of painful confusion, feeling ignored, unwanted and lonely. In a less rich society, such things will become more common.

Given all this, the taboo against suicide or assisted suicide seems incomprehensible. Religious people may think it wrong, although I have never quite understood why. It seems odd to me that they are not eager to meet their maker as soon as possible, if heaven is so devoutly to be desired. Perhaps it is different if one’s religion teaches that one might after death come back as a toad.

But, believers apart, for everyone else there is no philosophical reason against suicide that I can see. The usual slippery slope argument is purely emotional: we are all already on the slippery slope as far as any moral decisions go and constantly have to choose between two evils.

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Put aside the cruise brochures and let the garden retain that natural look for a few more years. Demography and declining investment returns are conspiring to keep you at your desk far longer than you ever expected.

This painful truth is no longer news in the rich world, and many governments have started to deal with the ageing problem. They have announced increases in the official retirement age that attempt to hold down the costs of state pensions while encouraging workers to stay in their jobs or get on their bikes and look for new ones.

Unfortunately, the boldest plans look inadequate. Older people are going to have to stay economically active longer than governments currently envisage; and that is going to require not just governments, but also employers and workers, to behave differently.

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…we can begin to tell a coherent story. Stress and inflammation produce derivatives of cortisol and cholesterol, which trigger misfolding in A-beta proteins. This, in turn, overwhelms the cells’ quality-assurance mechanism and results in growing numbers of insoluble proteins, which aggregate in plaques and tangles. And this blocks the transport of vital ingredients around brain cells, which causes the cells to die.

Somewhere along this chain, there is a link, we must hope, that can be attacked by medication””to prevent inflammation, discourage ozone reactions, encourage the refolding apparatus, improve protein solubility or boost the plaque-removal mechanism.

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The Republican budget released on Tuesday is a daring one in many ways. Above all, it would replace the current Medicare with a system of private health insurance plans subsidized by the government. Whether you like or loathe that idea, it would undeniably reduce Medicare’s long-term funding gap ”” which is by far the biggest source of looming federal deficits.

Yet there is at least one big way in which the plan isn’t daring at all. It asks for a whole lot of sacrifice from everyone under the age of 55 and little from everyone 55 and over. Representative Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who wrote the plan, calls the budget deficit an “existential threat” to the United States. Then he absolves more than one-third of all adults from responsibility in dealing with that threat.

This decision doesn’t make him unique in Washington. There is nearly a bipartisan consensus that any cuts to Medicare and Social Security should spare the baby boomers and the elderly. And, certainly, retirees or people on the verge of retirement shouldn’t have their benefits changed radically. But the consensus, like Mr. Ryan’s plan, goes too far.

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From the start, we need to think about how to think about growing old””and, in particular, how to think not simply of aging but of human aging. This will require that we learn from but also move beyond what has become the standard way to think about aging. Scholars study both why we age and how we age. The first seems to invite talk about a purpose, the second a mechanism. The first is more germane to my inquiry here.

Why do we age? The dominant answer today is that of evolutionary biology. We age because nature has relatively little stake in keeping us alive beyond our reproductive years. Insofar as we may speak of our lives having a point, it is to be carriers of DNA. Having passed that on to the next generation, we are dispensable. Any genetic trait harmful enough to cause death before the reproductive years will have difficulty surviving the filter of natural selection. Those who have such traits are less likely to reproduce, less likely to be effective carriers and transmitters of DNA. And, by contrast, natural selection will have relatively little effect on harmful genes if those harms appear only in the post-reproductive years.

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After Nazli Currim’s father died, her mother moved into Ms. Currim’s home. She cared for her mother full time, even after a stroke six years before she died.

Ms. Currim, 69, co-founder of the American Muslim Women’s Association and author of “Grandma Lives With Us”, a children’s book, never thought about finding a nursing home for her mother. Her attitude is common among Muslims in the United States, many of whom are reluctant even to consider placing an aging family member in a facility.

Part of that decision was a personal one, but part of it was practical: It is difficult for Muslims to find nursing homes and assisted living facilities that reflect their way of life.

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Children born today can expect to live longer than any previous generation in U.S. history, according preliminary government data released Wednesday.

Life expectancy at birth increased to 78.2 years in 2009, up from 78 in 2008.

“This is a new record high for life expectancy,” says Kenneth Kochanek, a statistician with the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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More workers are pessimistic about their retirement future than at any time in the past two decades, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute 2011 Retirement Confidence Survey.

The percentage of workers who are not at all confident about saving enough money for a comfortable retirement reached 27% in 2011, compared with 22% last year. When combined with those who said they are not too confident, the total reaches 50% of workers.

“That is sobering,” says Greg Burrows, senior vice president of retirement and investor services at the Principal Financial Group, a partner with the EBRI survey. “Hopefully this will spur some action.”

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As state and federal lawmakers search for ways to reduce government spending, some economists are urging them to raise the retirement age to ease budget pressures.

If Americans were to work longer, they would pay more in taxes, and at the same time reduce the cost of government pensions and Social Security benefits, according to these economists.

But others disagree. They say the fast-moving 21st century economy doesn’t need older workers as much as it needs young workers with the latest job skills.

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Prescription for a long life: Work hard. Don’t retire early.

The idea that your job or your boss is leading you to an early grave is one of several myths debunked in an analysis of a 90-year study that followed 1,528 Americans. Among other myths: be optimistic, get married, go to church, eat broccoli and get a gym membership.

Researchers Howard Friedman and Leslie Martin report their conclusions in a new book, The Longevity Project. “Everybody has the ideas ”” don’t stress, don’t worry, don’t work so hard, retire and go play golf,” says Friedman, a psychology professor at University of California-Riverside. “We did not find these patterns to exist in people who thrived.”

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President Obama’s budget director, Jacob Lew, said as much last week during his briefing on the president’s budget. Obama wants to find ways to “work together to find a solution to the long-term issues in Social Security,” Lew told reporters, but the program “does not contribute to the deficit in the short term.”

That would be nice if it were true. It’s not.

Social Security is a cash-in/cash-out program. It went into the red last year, when payroll tax revenue came up about $37 billion short of the benefits paid to retirees. Initially, that shortfall seemed a temporary consequence of the recession. But new projections from the Congressional Budget Office show that factors such as the payroll tax cut Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to last year mean that Social Security will instead come up short every year from now on ”” at least $45 billion this year, and a staggering half a trillion dollars over the next decade.

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The 401(k) generation is beginning to retire, and it isn’t a pretty sight.

The retirement savings plans that many baby boomers thought would see them through old age are falling short in many cases.

The median household headed by a person aged 60 to 62 with a 401(k) account has less than one-quarter of what is needed in that account to maintain its standard of living in retirement, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve and analyzed by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College for The Wall Street Journal. Even counting Social Security and any pensions or other savings, most 401(k) participants appear to have insufficient savings. Data from other sources also show big gaps between savings and what people need, and the financial crisis has made things worse.

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Those younger than the Baby Boomer generation may have missed the release of a Productivity Commission aged care report. Pre-Baby Boomers may wrongly have thought it doesn’t impact them.

Anyone who has had to find an aged care home for a loved one will tell you the system is a maze. It’s hard to access, and hard to find a way through. It’s not able to give everyone what they want.

The reason younger people should worry is that if they have family members, chances are they’ll take a crash course in aged care navigation if, without warning, a family member needs care urgently….

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What would you say to children who have aging parents?

When we’re young we usually don’t think much about growing old, or about our parents growing old either””not until something forces us to think about it. But it will happen, if they live long enough. So the first thing I’d say to those whose parents are growing older is to be prepared for it, and to accept whatever responsibilities it brings you.

Then be patient with them. They may not be able to do everything they once did, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily helpless or incompetent. And be alert to their needs””including their emotional and spiritual needs. Sometimes they just need to know that you’re there, and that you care….

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Social Security’s finances are getting worse as the economy struggles to recover and millions of baby boomers stand at the brink of retirement.

New congressional projections show Social Security running deficits every year until its trust funds are eventually drained in about 2037.

This year alone, Social Security is projected to collect $45 billion less in payroll taxes than it pays out in retirement, disability and survivor benefits, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday….

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We have come to believe a story about the deficit that is largely not true.

It’s a comforting story, to be sure. It holds the promise of a painless solution, because it suggests that the country’s huge looming deficits are not really our fault. Instead, they seem to stem from weak-willed politicians, wasteful government programs that do not benefit us and tax avoidance by people we have never met.

In truth, the coming deficits are a result, above all, of the fact that most Americans are scheduled to receive far more in Medicare benefits than they have paid in Medicare taxes. Conservative and liberal economists agree on this point. After Medicare on the list of big, growing budget items come Social Security and the military.

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In the first study, published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), older people without dementia whose blood showed lower levels of beta-amyloid 42/40 (proteins) had an increased rate of cognitive decline over nine years. The study found that participants with less education and lower levels of literacy had a stronger association with these biomarker levels. The study involved close to 1,000 participants with an average age of 74.

“What this implies ”” though we don’t know for sure, it’s just an association ”” is that even if you have this bad signature, you might be able to do something about it. Having a higher education appeared to be a sort of a buffer,” says study author Kristine Yaffe of the University of California-San Francisco and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

The second study, also in JAMA, suggests that a certain type of brain imaging procedure may help detect beta-amyloid in living patients.

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In keeping with a generation’s fascination with itself, the time has come to note the passing of another milestone: On New Year’s Day, the oldest members of the Baby Boom Generation will turn 65, the age once linked to retirement, early bird specials and gray Velcro shoes that go with everything.

Though other generations, from the Greatest to the Millennial, may mutter that it’s time to get over yourselves, this birthday actually matters. According to the Pew Research Center, for the next 19 years, about 10,000 people “will cross that threshold” every day ”” and many of them, whether through exercise or Botox, have no intention of ceding to others what they consider rightfully theirs: youth.

This means that the 79 million baby boomers, about 26 percent of this country’s population, will be redefining what it means to be older, and placing greater demands on the social safety net. They are living longer, working longer and, researchers say, nursing some disappointment about how their lives have turned out. The self-aware, or self-absorbed, feel less self-fulfilled, and thus are racked with self-pity.

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Consider an average-wage, two-earner couple together earning $89,000 a year. Upon retiring in 2011, they would have paid $114,000 in Medicare payroll taxes during their careers.

But they can expect to receive medical services – from prescriptions to hospital care – worth $355,000, or about three times what they put in.

The estimates by economists Eugene Steuerle and Stephanie Rennane of the Urban Institute think tank illustrate the huge disconnect between widely-held perceptions and the numbers behind Medicare’s shaky financing. Although Americans are worried about Medicare’s long-term solvency, few realize the size of the gap.

“The fact that you put money into the system doesn’t mean it’s there waiting for you to collect,” said Steuerle.

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Baby Boomers are about to create a record population explosion in the nation’s health care program for seniors.

Starting on Saturday, Baby Boomers begin turning 65 and qualifying for Medicare ”” one every eight seconds. A record 2.8 million will qualify in 2011, rising to 4.2 million a year by 2030, projections show.

In all, the government expects 76 million Boomers will age on to Medicare. Even factoring in deaths over that period, the program will grow from 47 million today to 80 million in 2030.

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As a society, we’ve recoiled from a candid discussion of public and private responsibilities for retirement. The long-ducked question is how much government should subsidize Americans for the last 20 to 30 years of their lives. Social Security and Medicare have evolved from an old-age safety net into a “middle-age retirement system,” as Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute puts it. In 1940, couples reaching 65 lived an average of almost 19 years, Steuerle notes. Now, the comparable figure for couples is 25 years. For Americans born today, the estimate approaches 30 years.

Overhauling Social Security and Medicare has many purposes: to extend people’s working lives; to make them pay more of the costs of their own retirement, as opposed to relying on subsidies from younger Americans; to prevent spending on old-age welfare from crippling other government programs or the economy; to create a bigger constituency for cost control in health care. America’s leaders have tiptoed around these issues, talking blandly about limiting “entitlements” or making proposals of such complexity that only a few “experts” understand.

Just because this is an awful time to discuss these questions does not mean they shouldn’t be discussed. The longer we wait, the more acute our fairness dilemma grows. We can’t deal with it unless public opinion is engaged and changed, but public opinion won’t be engaged and changed unless political leaders discard their self-serving hypocrisies. The old deserve dignity, but the young deserve hope. The passive acceptance of the status quo is the path of least resistance – and a formula for national decline.

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