Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, setting the pension age at 70 after years of fighting socialists with bans, laws, and a promise few workers would live long enough to use

Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, and the age written into the system was older still: 70. That number was not a warm Victorian gesture toward rest. It was a political calculation made inside a young German Empire where socialist parties were gaining