Differences in life expectancy across socioeconomic status are well known and many economists argue that they should be taken into account when designing pension systems. This paper analyses the relevance of using socioeconomic characteristics to differentiate the retirement age. Using US mortality rates assembled by Chetty et al. (2016), we simulate the lifespan distribution both across and within socioeconomic categories. Then, we analyze these categories’ ability to predict the lifespan of individuals. Results suggest that socioeconomic status has a relatively limited predictive power, due to the huge lifespan heterogeneity “within” each of them.

中文翻译：

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社会经济地位预测寿命的有限能力：对养老金政策的影响

不同社会经济地位的预期寿命差异是众所周知的，许多经济学家认为在设计养老金制度时应该考虑到这些差异。本文分析了利用社会经济特征区分退休年龄的相关性。使用 Chetty 等人收集的美国死亡率。(2016)，我们模拟了社会经济类别之间和内部的寿命分布。然后，我们分析这些类别预测个体寿命的能力。结果表明，由于每个人“内部”的巨大寿命异质性，社会经济地位的预测能力相对有限。