Life expectancy is an elusive number and an interesting component of the retirement scenario. You could die tomorrow or live to be 110 years old. You really have no idea what the answer to this question is. So, like all the other numbers on this blog, we will look at averages, since there is really no other number we can use with any confidence. Some X-spurts will tell you to take early Social Security ONLY if you are in poor health and do not expect to live very long. By definition, life expectancy is the remaining time one can expect to live, on average, meaning half will live longer and half will not. A current age at any given point in time will exclude all of your fellow humans born in the year you were born who have already died. An example, when I was born in 1955, my life expectancy was 66.7 years (72.8 for a female). According to The Social Security Administration, by 2015 (the year I turned 60), 142 per 1,000 of these poor unfortunates had already died (14.2 %), leaving the average for the rest of us who had survived this long to live another 21.5 years (24.48 for women). That means of the 85.8 % of us who celebrated our 60th birthday, half will live to be older than 81.5 (men) and half will not. As you get older, you become an increasingly important component of calculating the average. The vast majority of us will continue to survive after age 62 as the older we get, the less the impact of the age of our death plays on the average. Other factors including medical breakthroughs, safety regulations, diet, etc. have moved the bar an additional 4.8 years of life for us US males since our birth in 1955.
By the time we are first eligible for SS benefits (age 62), another 20 will have died. So, statistically speaking, 838 (out of the original 1000 born 62 years ago) of us have this decision to make: file now or not?. Keep in mind, each year, of course, claims more lives that by the time us 1955'ers reach age 70, only 731 per 1000 of us will still be alive to collect anything. Put another way, if you are trying to decide to wait until age 70, you have a 12.66% chance you made the worst possible financial decision back when you were 62 by waiting, coupled with the bad luck of dying before collecting a dime.
If you are married, the outcome is potentially less painful. A surviving spouse is entitled to one half of their mate's benefit. Many people (male and female) of this generation have worked a full career and have accumulated a benefit greater than half of their spouse's benefit, so this may or may not be a factor for you. Bottom line is you would never be better off if your spouse dies...as it pertains to Social Security anyway.