State Pension Age review due before 7th May 2017

scholesfan88

westv wrote: »

If I had to wait until SPA before I am able to retire I would have been working for 51 years! :eek:

Mine would be 53 years, im tying a noose right now...

kidmugsy

nicknameless wrote: »

Reverse causation and artefact largely been disproved and abandoned as explanatory

How? You can't do controlled experiments on this, so how can such a speculation be "disproved"?

saver861

Soooo lets see now ... there are those with good health living in bad health areas .... and those with bad health living in affluent areas.

So, the people with bad health get their pension earlier on the premise they will cost less due to kicking it soooner ...... buttttt .... have those with bad health not been more expensive to the NHS system.... likely other benefits also etc etc.

Should be interesting .....

Paul_Herring

saver861 wrote: »

have those with bad health not been more expensive to the NHS system.... likely other benefits also etc etc.

It's generally thought (except for, of course, the fake charities like ASH and DrinkAware who only pick the nice bits that fit their agendas) smokers and drinkers are subsidising the non-smokers and drinkers because:

1) They pay more in tax over their lives (smoking taxes [excise+VAT. 91% of a £6 pack of fags is tax. Yes, 91%.] alone come to 10% of the funding for the NHS.)
2) They live shorter lives so aren't a drain on the NHS for as long as their sin-free peers with their expensive care-homes and medicines to shuffle them off to 120 or whatever a sin-free person lives to.
2b) They live shorter lives so aren't a drain on the rest of the state because they won't be picking up things like their state pensions for nearly as long as their dementia-riddled, sin-free, peers.

Or something like that.

Those (like the fake charities previously alluded to) make claims that the sinners are a net-cost [STRIKE]to the state[/STRIKE] to society/economy (see what they do?) typically only count the "while they're alive" (and only the cost, they ignore the tax collected) while simultaneously ignoring the "because they're dead" sides of the equation, or start including stuff in the equation that has no reason being there like "sick days from work" (cost to the company) or "smoke breaks" (what about non-sinner coffee breaks in the kitchen while discussing Eastenders?) and whatever state costs they deem to be paid from "alcohol related crime," (the numbers used are typically highly inflated, since - for example - if a particular crime would have happened in the absence of alcohol, it is still included in the figure.)


http://www.iea.org.uk/in-the-media/press-release/drinkers-subsidise-non-drinkers-by-%C2%A365bn-each-year has a more detailed reasoning about why drinkers contribute £6.5bn/yr nett (2015 prices.)

PensionTech

Going back to the "non-universal State Pension Age" thing, and the media's take on it (someone has mentioned the Telegraph).

I'm not convinced that any of the papers are able to speculate with any authority about what this means. My guess, like many others, would be that this relates to being able to take state pension within a range of ages, with lower amounts being paid for earlier retirement and vice versa. In this way it would mimic most DB schemes as well as the current arrangements for deferral of state pension (but in the other direction). That would seem the most logical route.

However, I've seen various papers coming at this from different angles:
- Geographical variations
- Employment type (the DM screams about discrimination against white-collar workers because it thinks labourers might be able to retire earlier)
- Variations based on employment record
- Anything else that you might take into account for annuity pricing (e.g. smoking, drinking etc.)

These guesses are generally attributed mysteriously to "sources" and I don't think there's any reason to believe that any of them are genuine until they can be linked to someone actually involved in the review. In any case, common sense is likely to prevail to some extent where a policy is clearly unfair, complicated or open to abuse.

The actual terms of reference for the review are here: http://qna.files.parliament.uk/ws-attachments/456278/original/ToR%20-%20SPa%20Independent%20Review.pdf

zagfles

kidmugsy wrote: »

Maybe, maybe not. Like much of medicine, there are great black holes of ignorance. My own bet is that it's partly reverse causation: people of high health and therefore energy disproportionately end up relatively wealthier and living in pleasanter places; people who have drawn the short straw genetically, or have been rotten unlucky with infections or whatnot, end up living in the poorer, less pleasant places.

Or rather more likely - health and wealth are both symptoms of something else rather than one causing the other. The famous marshmallow experiment I think gives a clue - it showed a very significant correlation between those who delay their gratification and later life outcomes, more significant than anything else including socio-economic background.

Those who want gratification now and sod the future are less likely to study at school, less likely to save, more likely to get into debt, more likely to smoke, more likely to eat high fat food, and so more likely to be both poor and unhealthy. So poverty and health outcomes are both causes of the same thing, rather than one causing the other.

This area is fraught with controversy though - particulary as a lot of research is commissioned by pressure groups who have an agenda to show poverty as a cause not a symptom.

zagfles

PensionTech wrote: »

Going back to the "non-universal State Pension Age" thing, and the media's take on it (someone has mentioned the Telegraph).

I'm not convinced that any of the papers are able to speculate with any authority about what this means. My guess, like many others, would be that this relates to being able to take state pension within a range of ages, with lower amounts being paid for earlier retirement and vice versa. In this way it would mimic most DB schemes as well as the current arrangements for deferral of state pension (but in the other direction). That would seem the most logical route.

Though of course that would have knock on implications for means tested benefits, so would be fraught with problems.

However, I've seen various papers coming at this from different angles:
- Geographical variations
- Employment type (the DM screams about discrimination against white-collar workers because it thinks labourers might be able to retire earlier)
- Variations based on employment record
- Anything else that you might take into account for annuity pricing (e.g. smoking, drinking etc.)

These guesses are generally attributed mysteriously to "sources" and I don't think there's any reason to believe that any of them are genuine until they can be linked to someone actually involved in the review. In any case, common sense is likely to prevail to some extent where a policy is clearly unfair, complicated or open to abuse.

Yes I think you're right particularly as one of the biggest complaints about pensions is they are hard to understand.

The actual terms of reference for the review are here: http://qna.files.parliament.uk/ws-attachments/456278/original/ToR%20-%20SPa%20Independent%20Review.pdf

Which is quite vague/open.

missbiggles1

kidmugsy wrote: »

The equalisation law required equalisation according to sex. Maybe someone can think up some other criterion for de-equalisation.

The rich get theirs early, workers have to keep at it until they drop?

Paul_Herring

missbiggles1 wrote: »

The rich get theirs early, workers have to keep at it until they drop?

I think people are asking for criteria to change the status-quo, not keep it as it currently is....

nicknameless

kidmugsy wrote: »

How? You can't do controlled experiments on this, so how can such a speculation be "disproved"?

Ok fair enough. Poor selection (pardon the pun) of wording after midnight and poor reading of your post! Apologies.

The general academic consensus is that direct selection is not a chief driver of health inequalities. A small contributor perhaps, but not a key explanation of what's being discussed here. Mainly examined via cohort studies. Of course we can't allocate people to poor health (other than via their starting social position at birth and therefore via natural experiment - controversial eh ).

Not got the time to dig out references but stuff by Michael Marmot, George Davey Smith, Richard Wilkinson (proponent of psychosocial theory and explanation), or any generic health inequality theory text should suffice.