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Jimmy Carter sets a new record on October 1, his birthday, when he becomes the first US president to reach triple digits.

It’s a milestone that more and more Americans will reach in the coming years — and something the American social safety net is unprepared for.

Carter’s post-presidency began in 1981 after he lost his bid for re-election and when he was 56, too young for Social Security and Medicare.

Carter did not devote his post-presidential life to serving on corporate boards and raking in speaking fees, as other recent presidents have done.

Carter got his hands dirty building houses, flew peacekeeping missions to Cuba and the Middle East, negotiated the release of hostages, lived in his hometown, taught at Sunday schools and colleges, wrote books and won Grammys.

His post-presidency has been undisputedly the longest, most just, and most productive post-presidency in history, although John Quincy Adams’ post-presidential anti-slavery efforts in Congress get an honorable mention.

In the almost Forty-four years after he left office, Carter essentially helped eradicate the Guinea worm, a parasite that infected all around According to The Carter Center, there were 3.5 million in the mid-1980s and only 14 in 2023.

It has been 22 years since he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, just as the US was preparing for the war in Iraq. Carter also made a historic visit to Cuba that year.

It’s been nine years since Carter announced at a news conference that he had been diagnosed with brain cancer and might not have long to live.

CNN’s Stephen Collinson wrote at the time:

“I’ve had a great life,” Carter said, with the same unflinching honesty and meticulous detail that marked his presidency. “I’m ready for anything and looking forward to a new adventure,” Carter said during the 40-minute performance in front of the cameras, in which he regularly showed his big smile and never fell prey to emotions. “It is in the hands of God, whom I worship.”

In December 2015, Carter announced that the cancer was gone after treatment. A timeline of his life maintained by CNN’s research library contains many more notable items entries.

It’s been nine years since Carter published an autobiography, “A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety.” He won a Grammy Award – his second – for the audiobook. A few years later he would win a third.

It’s been seven years since he was hospitalized for dehydration in Winnipeg, Canada, where he was outside – still working! – for Habitat for Humanity, the organization with which he had a long collaboration.

It’s been five years since 2019, when he won that third Grammy, broke his hip and joked that there should be an age limit for the presidency, since at 80 he couldn’t have done the job. That was also the year he turned 95 and became the longest-living American president, surpassing George HW Bush.

It’s been almost two years since Carter entered hospice care and almost a year since his wife, Rosalynn, died. They married in 1946.

As remarkable as Carter has made his years since American voters removed him from the White House, there is also something increasingly normal about people living to be a hundred years old.

Former presidents, all wealthy and protected by generous pensions, are not a representative sample of society, but it is notable that the four oldest former presidents – Carter, Bush, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan – all lived in the 21st century. century.

Overall, life expectancy in the US fell during the Covid-19 pandemic. According to a KFF analysis, the country has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels and is lagging behind other developed countries. As of 2022, life expectancy for American men was 74.8 and for American women it was 80.2.

But the population of 100-year-olds is expected to quadruple in the coming decades, according to Pew. Research center. It estimated in January that the current number of centenarians was about 101,000 and that within 30 years that number would increase to about 422,000, a small but growing share of the U.S. population as the average age rises and the birth rate falls.

CNN’s Eva Rothenberg wrote a year ago about the challenges many Americans will face later in life as they live longer, with more than half of older Americans likely to need long-term care in the future — something many imagine won’t be able to afford and that’s not covered by Medicare, the federal health insurance program that primarily benefits older Americans.

A major problem during the Carter presidency and in 1980

Carter signed a law in 1977 that raised taxes to pay for Social Security and changed the way youth benefits were calculated, which should help the program’s finances. Later, in 1980, Carter signed additional legislation to control the growth of disability benefits.

In the 1980 presidential election, which Carter ultimately lost to Reagan, the long-term viability of Social Security and Medicare was a major campaign issue, featured prominently in the debates. And rightly so: the long-term viability of social safety net programs was still seriously in question, despite the law Carter signed in 1977.

“There you go again,” Regan said dismissively to Carter in a presidential debate, denying that he opposed the idea of ​​Medicare. Reagan said he simply opposed the version that became law. Carter later accused Reagan of what we today might call voters’ bias on the issue.

“Governor Reagan has the right to change his mind. He has no right to rewrite history,” Carter said just days before Election Day that year.

Despite his previous opposition to safety net programs, Reagan promised during the campaign to take care of their finances. Carter, on the other hand, talked about creating a new national health insurance plan, which remains a dream for many Democrats.

As president, after initially unsuccessfully proposing cuts to benefits, Reagan created a commission, chaired by Alan Greenspan, that proposed solutions—some of which eventually became law in 1983, and not a moment too soon. According to the Congressional Research Service, Social Security was months or weeks away from paying out full benefits in 1983.

For example, the 1983 Social Security adjustments included counting some Social Security benefits as taxable income and gradually raising the retirement age from 65 to 67.

How gradually? The increase is still occurring more than forty years later. The 1983 changes made the full retirement age 67 for people born in 1960 or later. These seniors still have a few years to go, although people can retire earlier for a lower benefit.

That 1983 law, passed at the beginning of Carter’s very early and long political retirement, was the last major structural change to affect Social Security’s solvency. There have been adjustments and major changes in Medicare before.

Now social safety net programs are once again teetering on insolvency. According to the government, Social Security will be unable to pay full benefits in just over a decade. Medicare has a little more time.

Today, there are new calls to gradually raise the retirement age or increase the taxes that fund Social Security, which only applies to the first $168,600 of income.

As in the 1970s and 1980s, changes to the safety net will require serious debate from all sides of the issue. It’s a debate that few people are having right now.

Neither presidential candidate is talking much about the long-term funding of these programs this year. In fact, one of Donald Trump’s top proposals is to end the taxation of Social Security benefits that Reagan and lawmakers imposed in 1983. Vice President Kamala Harris has a vague plan to impose new taxes on the wealthy.