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Policy

Fogies Are Working for the Weekend, Not Retirement

Katherine Mangu-Ward | 8.17.2009 11:33 AM

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Folks are waking up to the fact that the market crash and looming state insolvency mean the dream of a pension-and-government-funded adventure vacation retirement starting on their 62nd birthday is dead:

Just over half of all working adults ages 50 to 64 say they may delay their retirement—and another 16% say they never expect to stop working.

Members of this so-called "Threshold Generation" are twice as likely as younger workers to say they never plan to retire (16% vs. 8%). Moreover, the Thresholders who do plan to retire someday say they plan to keep working, on average, until they are age 66—when they would be four years older than the age at which current retirees age 65 or older report that they stopped working.

More Social Security reading here. More on why your pension is screwed here. 

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Katherine Mangu-Ward is editor in chief of Reason.

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