Increasing retirement age recipe for conflict

This is misleadingly put, as it makes it sound as if the life expectancy of the US as a whole is decreasing.

This is unlikely to be the case.

What is true is that life expectancy is falling in poorer areas of the US and, taking the country as a whole, it is falling relative to other industrialised countries.

If life expectancy is falling or remaining static for poorer sections of the population and rising for the better off, this clearly means that any increase in the pension age based on average life expectancy across the entire population would exacerbate existing social divisions.

This is the point I wished to make and I apologise to readers for misleading them.

Steve McGiffen
Bourre, France