A New Approach to Raising Social Security's Earliest Eligibility Age

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. While Social Security's Normal Retirement Age (NRA) is increasing to 67, the Earliest Eligibility Age (EEA) remains at 62. Similar plans to increase the EEA raise concerns that they would create excessive hardship on workers who are worn-out or in bad health. One simple rule to increase the EEA is to tie an increase to the number of quarters of covered earnings. Such a provision would allow those with long work lives-presumably the less educated and lower paid-to quit earlier. We provide evidence that this simple rule would not satisfy the goal of preventing undue hardship on certain workers. Therefore, this paper considers an alternative policy that ties an increase in the EEA to individuals' Average Indexed Monthly Earnings (AIME). We show that allowing workers with low AIME to continue to be eligible to receive benefits at age 62 has promise as a policy to protect workers who have low earnings and are in poor health from hardship associated with an increase in the EEA. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may

Calculating Expected Social Security Benefits by Race, Education and Claiming Age

“…Pushing back the EEA by two years would cause the least-educated men to claim later than their maximum EPV, but the loss of EPV is just $3,000 over their lifetimes. This finding does not necessarily suggest the effect of pushing back the early eligibility age is trivialworkers who claim early are often in poor health and less educated than others, making working longer difficult (Haverstick et al, 2007). 1 The SSB alleviates privacy concerns by allowing researchers to first run their analyses on synthesized data and then, through a U.S. Census employee, re-run the analysis on actual data.…”

Calculating Neutral Increases in Retirement Age by Socioeconomic Status

“…The expanding mortality gap between high school dropouts and the more educated may simply reflect the increasing selectivity of the dropout group, not any underlying change in the relationship between SES and 1 Munnell (2015). 2 See, for example, Aaron and Burtless (2013), Panis et al (2002), Leonesio, Vaughn, and Wixon (2003), Weller (2005), Haverstick et al (2007), Turner (2007), Munnell and Libby (2007), Cutler (2009), Monk, Turner, and Zhivan (2010), and Cutler et al (2011). 3 The National Longitudinal Mortality Study began yearly collection in 1979. mortality.…”