Final salary scheme closing - what to do

cyclonebri1

Linton wrote: »

People who have been old-style brickies labourers all their lives I can well believe can be expected to die young. But most people havent been brickies labourers or miners or asbestos workers etc etc all their lives. That's the point. Those sorts of jobs have been disappearing for 40 or more years now. Many people now aged 60 who started heavy work perhaps in the late 1960s were sacked during the 1980s/1990s and have been working indoors in good conditions for many years.

You can add in the great decrease in numbers of people who smoke over the past 20-30 years, which is now having a major impact on the death rate.

So I am afraid your views were right perhaps 50 years ago but much has changed in the intervening years which is now feeding through to the age of death.

Can I ask what you do for a living? Only to see what your normal day would be like and that of your fellow workers.
We obviously have very different views, but I can tell you, visit an average manufacturing plant in the UK, (granted there are a lot less today than yesterday), the poor sods are working their butts off, the soft jobs have gone I'm afraid.

atush

People, incl manual laborers, live longer now than they did in the past- fact. Fact, they don't all die by 70.

In general, those who retire at 65 these days, on average, will live past 80- 85 even.

I think the statistics quoted in some above posts are based on cr*p

kidmugsy

jamesd wrote: »

You might think that people working maintaining a petrol refinery would have a shorter life expectancy than average. And you'd be right... but not because they work at a refinery.

...

So don't drink to excess or kill yourself and you could live to normal life expectancy at that refinery.

Not quite: "The overall mortality of the cohort was significantly lower than expected when compared with the US general population" - so in spite of the gallant attempts of the tradesmen to drink themselves to death, they still had a greater life expectancy than the general US population.

I see that by contrast the process workers were not prone to drink themselves to death. I was amused because in my experience (decades ago, and in Britain) process workers (how to put this?) lacked the sourness, the chip on the shoulder, that many of the tradesmen burdened themselves with.

jamesd

Thanks, corrected my post. It might be that they are better educated than usual, since better education tends to correlate with longer life expectancy.

nicknameless

Health inequity.

Generally our health has improved but gaps in health using whatever measures (life expectancy, incidence, prevalence, survival measures etc.) have most recently grown and are still growing as measured according to several proxies for our position in society (take your pick - occupation, social class, income, gender).

These measures correlate very well with relative income / deprivation (insert measure of choice) within and between countries, which has been and is still increasing.

Inequalities (difference), inequity (unfair difference).

NPA changes increase inequity.

Averages allow politicians to ignore these things.

kidmugsy

jamesd wrote: »

Thanks, corrected my post. It might be that they are better educated than usual, since better education tends to correlate with longer life expectancy.

There's also the Healthy Worker Effect.

I may be out-of-date on this, but to really put up your risks of death at work you had to do one of the dangerous jobs - deep sea fishing and quarrying are examples that stick in my mind. (Much more dangerous than coal-mining, apparently.) Oil refineries are benign places by comparison.

cyclonebri1

nicknameless wrote: »

Health inequity.

Generally our health has improved but gaps in health using whatever measures (life expectancy, incidence, prevalence, survival measures etc.) have most recently grown and are still growing as measured according to several proxies for our position in society (take your pick - occupation, social class, income, gender).

These measures correlate very well with relative income / deprivation (insert measure of choice) within and between countries, which has been and is still increasing.

Inequalities (difference), inequity (unfair difference).

NPA changes increase inequity.

Averages allow politicians to ignore these things.

So, you're sitting on the fence?:D

How do you figure the situation of the road sweeper that is entitled to the same healthcare as the solicitor sitting in the same surgery?

Can they both expect the same level of attention from the GP?, or is he likely to provide better care to the professional guy?

Oh wait a minute the pro won't be there, he will be sitting in the lounge suite at Bupa:A

Sorry, not a grouse but trying to show how these lines are difficult to draw, and that age V class does have an effect on death age.

nicknameless

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

So, you're sitting on the fence?:D

How do you figure the situation of the road sweeper that is entitled to the same healthcare as the solicitor sitting in the same surgery?

Can they both expect the same level of attention from the GP?, or is he likely to provide better care to the professional guy?

Oh wait a minute the pro won't be there, he will be sitting in the lounge suite at Bupa:A

Sorry, not a grouse but trying to show how these lines are difficult to draw, and that age V class does have an effect on death age.

Sorry might be being a little thick but I don't quite get the point you're making? I think we might be saying the same thing but not sure.

I was just stating what we know about the points that were being made I.e. about health inequities. Heavily researched over the last 30 years in particular.

Generally your road sweeper has been and will be shafted unfairly.

jamesd

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

Can they both expect the same level of attention from the GP?, or is he likely to provide better care to the professional guy?

The professional guy is likely to:

1. take more care in selecting a GP.
2. ask better questions and understand the answers better.
3. benefit from the intangibles relating to his status, which really do exist.

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

Oh wait a minute the pro won't be there, he will be sitting in the lounge suite at Bupa:A

Both can choose to spend that money but it'll be easier for the person with a higher paying job.

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

Sorry, not a grouse but trying to show how these lines are difficult to draw, and that age V class does have an effect on death age.

No need to worry about being a grouse on this, it's a real equality problem as state pension age increases.

But it is also worth remembering that when the state pensions were introduced, many of those who have the lower life expectancy now were expected to have died before they could collect at all. There's still substantial benefit due to longer life expectancy even if the state pension age is higher.

jamesd

nicknameless wrote: »

Generally your road sweeper has been and will be shafted unfairly.

I don't think that in general that is true. The road sweeper may live for less time but that's due to factors that in theory an individual can change, like doing a different job. Shelf stacking is an alternative job that a road sweeper could probably do and which probably has a longer life expectancy.

I also don't think it's unfair that those who get more educated - and are able to benefit from and use that education - can benefit from it. Even though I know that there are many forms of education that most people can't possibly benefit from, because they just aren't capable of learning what is being taught.