Working and Claiming Behavior at Social Security’s Early Eligibility Age Among Men by Lifetime Earnings Decile

Is the Adjustment of Social Security Benefits Actuarially Fair, and If So, for Whom?

“…Our contributions extend the literature on claiming-age patterns and benefits inequality. Previous research has shown that high socioeconomic status workers are more likely to delay claiming (Coile et al 2002;Hurd et al 2004;Waldron 2001Waldron , 2002Waldron , 2004Sass et al 2013;Armour and Knapp 2021), that heterogeneity in claiming ages arises both within and across earnings groups (Waldron 2020b), and that economic and demographic inequality undoes much of the redistribution intended by the Social Security benefit formula (Liebman 2002). An analysis of recent data from the Health and…”