The normal Social Security retirement age should go up, according to the American Academy of Actuaries (AAA).
Thomas Terry, chair of the public interest committee at the AAA, Washington, has delivered that message in a letter sent on behalf of the AAA to the co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
The commission is trying to find ways to reduce the federal budget deficit and deal with Social Security and Medicare benefits obligations.
The AAA is a nonpartisan professional group formed to give actuaries a voice in the making 
of public policy.
The AAA now supports the adoption of an increase in the retirement age, Terry says.
Some say that an increase in the Social Security retirement age is equivalent to a benefit cut, and some have narrower concerns about the idea of raising the Social Security retirement age, such as concerns about the effects on workers in physically demanding jobs, Terry says.
In reality, Terry says, the steadily increasing U.S. life expectancy is giving workers what amounts to
