Charting Retirement is a weekly snapshot of retirement-related data.
Assume we have 1,000 relatively healthy 65-year-old men. The chances of their staying alive at least until their 80s are quite good. More difficult, however, is avoiding critical illness – very serious conditions such as heart attacks, life-threatening cancers, stroke and Alzheimer’s. (There are 14 classifications in all.) While more than 500 of these men will survive until age 90, only 39 of them are expected to avoid a critical illness by that age. Of the 41 survivors at age 100, none is expected to be free of critical illness.
Frederick Vettese is a former chief actuary of Morneau Shepell and the author of Retirement Income for Life.