Does Age-Related Decline in Ability Correspond with Retirement Age? (from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College)
LSS, this study asks whether many or most white-collar workers have lost so much cognitive ability by age 67 that it's foolish to assume they should, or will be able to, remain employed. The paper is a great exploration of both the physical and cognitive effects of aging generally, broken down by ability, and I encourage everyone here who's interested in the effects of aging to read it.
A snippet about cognitive decline, from the PDF:
My first thought was that we may need to rethink the age of politicians.The extent to which cognitive abilities decline with age generally depends on whether the cognitive ability in question benefits from accumulated knowledge or not. “Crystalized” cognitive ability, or knowledge (such as one’s vocabulary), tends to accumulate well into one’s sixties and even seventies. Older workers in occupations requiring extensive work-related knowledge to be productive will hold a productivity advantage over younger workers to the extent that the work-related knowledge in question is static.
On the other hand, “fluid” cognitive abilities, such as episodic memory, working memory, and reaction time – which people need to acquire new information and make decisions – steadily decline with age starting in one’s twenties or thirties. [Multiple sources cited.]
...
The [test given as part of this study] measures the importance of seven broad types of cognitive abilities – verbal ability, spatial ability, ability to generate ideas and reason, attentiveness, quantitative ability, memory, and perceptual abilities – for over 900 occupations. Within these categories, and in keeping with the discussion above, verbal and quantitative abilities (which generally reflect crystalized ability) do not decline significantly by age 60 for most individuals. On the other hand, spatial abilities, perceptual speed, and memory (which generally reflect fluid ability) tend to undergo measurable and practically significant decline by the end of most workers’ careers.
Googling "average age of US Congress" returns The average age of Members of the House at the beginning of the 113th Congress was 57.0 years; of Senators, 62.0 years. So they're 60, more or less. Although many of these are our best and brightest, according to this paper their ability to "acquire new information and make decisions" is already in significant decline. [Insert joke here.] And is that not the very essence of political work? Also, is this part of the reason old people are statistically more likely to be set in their ways? Have they literally lost the cognitive ability to go with any sort of flow?I also wonder, as the authors of the paper did, whether increasing the FRA beyond 67 is wise. I'm generally in favor because we have limited resources and a huge national debt, and because a significant majority of people who get to sixty are now living past eighty. It makes sense to direct limited resources toward the most vulnerable people. I suppose I'm now wondering whether age is the best quantifier of that vulnerability, although there are multiple slippery slopes in introducing other variables. Considering state of health, for instance, would direct some portion of resources "more fairly" if one is looking at need, but IMO unfairly penalizes people who chose to live a healthy lifestyle over an unhealthy one. Considering someone's personal savings, same thing... for some of the destitute it really would be more fair; for others, who went without life's iPads to make a modest nest egg for themselves, it's hugely unfair. Each person's personal definition of "fair" is likely to be different. In our elder-care equations, whom should the "winners" and "losers" be?
The paper concludes by recommending that the fairest thing would be to consider the occupation of the worker in the retirement age analysis. I'm not sure that's "fair" either, but I admit I don't have any novel ideas myself.
