PERSPECTIVE ON SOCIAL SECURITY : A Healthy Solution: Keep Working : Today’s 65-year-old has a long life ahead; delaying retirement helps the U.S. treasury and personal well-being.

It’s the demography, stupid!

No one wants to talk about it. We guard against examining the issue with the ferocity of a Victorian matron denying knowledge of sex to her 11 children.

President Clinton, his Republican compatriots and everybody else in this country are dealing with the phenomenal consequences of the recent increase in average life span. We have social institutions and expectations, however, which are still rooted in 19th-Century longevity tables. And the result of our failure to acknowledge the dragon at our doorstep will soon be catastrophic.

In the 1930s, when Social Security was created, the average life span after retirement was only a couple of years. Few women worked, so female retirement at 62 was chivalrously proffered, and men were able to retire three years later. Nowadays, the average 65-year-old man can expect 15 more years of life, and the average woman an additional 19 years. Maximum monthly Social Security payments to an individual are currently more than $1,100. Suppose a woman is entitled to $1,000 a month and lives the statistically allotted 19 years following retirement at age 65. She will cost us more than $220,000, exclusive of cost-of-living increases--if she stays completely well.

Illness is a reality of the aging process, and the annual mean sum spent for the health care of each older American is more than $5,000. (Younger persons need about $1,290 per year for health care, including pregnancy care, child-care allotments and the care of the congenitally ill.) Should our hypothetical woman retiree have medical expenses factored in, her retirement will cost us more than $320,000.

Whereas in 1900 the senior population numbered only 3.1 million, the senior population in 2010, when most baby boomers will begin to hanker for their Social Security checks in large numbers, will be more than 50 million. Meanwhile, overall population will have increased to only about four times the number in 1900, meaning that the number of people over 65 is growing at about four to five times the rate of the population in general. And, we are producing far fewer children than did our parents and grandparents; Americans aren’t quite replacing themselves, whereas the average 1950s mother had at least four children.

So the debt will become worse and worse, not because of pork-barreling, not because of the evil rich or any other flimsy target that politicians blame. The basic problem is that we will have an increasingly older, sicker and more dependent population and an increasingly smaller work base. It’s not nice to say this, and one could be accused of ageism. What is the solution? A national effort to maintain function. People who retire earlier than they psychologically have to, who adopt an entitlement mentality, who substitute TV and a high-calorie restaurant diet for work, home cooking, self-sufficiency and exercise are people who get sick, fall into a pattern of spiraling dependency and eventually will bankrupt this nation. Look at the figures. In 1900, more than 67% of men over 65 were in the work force. In 1989, only 16.6% were similarly employed. Only 8% of women, traditionally more long-lived, work after age 65. Nursing-home studies repeatedly show that activity increases muscle mass, function and happiness even in the very old.

Yet most of our seniors feel that they deserve to be taken care of, that over 65 is play time. Meanwhile, both parents in most families must work to make ends meet and to pay the ever-escalating costs of entitlement programs. (Part of the new tax law is yet another tax to pay for Medicare.)

I would like to make this proposal: If you are over 65 and in passably good health, consider yourself obligated to make a contribution to society. Sure, you have arthritis, but your arthritis will become better if you get out there and get busy. So will your diabetes, hypertension and depression. Volunteer and paid jobs are all over the place. Just look at the paper, call your local cancer society, day-care center or nursing home. Perhaps we should start a domestic Peace Corps for all seniors receiving Social Security who have the strength and mobility to eat out in a restaurant.

It isn’t fair to make younger citizens assume so much responsibility for the care of the “entitled,” even if they are a politically strong and threatening bloc of voters. Eventually, we will have to pay for our topsy-turvy demographic situation, and the earlier we face up to it, the less catastrophic will be the results.