Raising retirement age gains support

July 11, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON

Young Americans might not get full Social Security retirement benefits until they reach age 70 if some trial balloons that prominent lawmakers of both parties are floating become law.

No one who’s slated to receive benefits in the next decade or two is likely to be affected, but there’s a gentle, growing and unusually bipartisan push to raise the retirement age for full Social Security benefits for people born in the 1960s and after.

The suggestions are being taken seriously after decades when they were politically impossible because officials — and, increasingly, their constituents — are confronting the inescapable challenge of the nation’s enormous debt.

Social Security was created in 1935 with a retirement age of 65, but since then, life expectancy at that age has increased by about six years, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Today the full Social Security benefit retirement age is 66 for people born from 1943 to 1954. It then increases by two months for each birth year until those born in 1960 or later get full benefits at age 67.

Raising the age eventually to 70 could prove to be politically acceptable because it wouldn’t have an immediate social impact, but it would demonstrate that politicians are resolute enough to mend one of the government’s most-popular social programs and to tackle the national debt.

If they did, they’d have substantial academic backing.

“For a while, there’s been a consensus among economists that raising the retirement age makes a lot of sense,” said Richard Johnson, a senior fellow and the director of the Retirement Policy Program at the Urban Institute, a Washington research group.

Still, there are potential downsides.

“There are some incredible ramifications to raising the age,” said Barbara Kennelly, the president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. “Not everyone can work until they’re 70.”