IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crr/crrwps/wp2004-30.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does Work Pay at Older Ages?

Author

Listed:
  • Barbara A. Butrica
  • Richard W. Johnson
  • Karen Elizabeth Smith
  • C. Eugene Steuerle

Abstract

Encouraging work at older ages is a critical policy goal for an aging society, but many features of the current system of benefits and taxes provide strong work disincentives. The implicit tax rate on work increases rapidly at older ages, approaching 50 percent for some workers by age 70. In addition, by age 65 people can typically receive nearly as much in retirement as they can by working. If older Americans could overcome these barriers and delay retirement, they could substantially improve their economic well-being at older ages. For example, many people could increase their annual consumption at older ages by more than 25 percent by simply retiring at age 67 instead of age 62.

Suggested Citation

  • Barbara A. Butrica & Richard W. Johnson & Karen Elizabeth Smith & C. Eugene Steuerle, 2004. "Does Work Pay at Older Ages?," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2004-30, Center for Retirement Research, revised Nov 2004.
    • Handle: RePEc:crr:crrwps:wp2004-30
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://crr.bc.edu/working-papers/does-work-pay-at-older-ages/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gordon B.T. Mermin & Richard W. Johnson & Dan Murphy, 2006. "Why Do Boomers Plan to Work So Long?," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2006-19, Center for Retirement Research, revised Nov 2006.
    2. Matthew S. Rutledge & John E. Lindner, 2016. "Do Late-Career Wages Boost Social Security More For Women Than Men?," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2016-13, Center for Retirement Research.
    3. Barbara A Butrica & Karen Elizabeth Smith & C. Eugene Steuerle, 2006. "Working for a Good Retirement," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2006-8, Center for Retirement Research, revised May 2006.
    4. Richard W. Johnson, 2011. "Phased Retirement and Workplace Flexibility for Older Adults," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 638(1), pages 68-85, November.
    5. Gopi Shah Goda & John Shoven & Sita Slavov, "undated". "A Tax On Work For The Elderly: Medicare As A Secondary Payer," Discussion Papers 08-60, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    6. Teresa Ghilarducci & Michael Papadopoulos & Anthony Webb, 2020. "The Illusory Benefits of Working Longer on Financial Preparedness for Retirement," SCEPA working paper series. 2020-02, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:crr:crrwps:wp2004-30. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Amy Grzybowski or Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/crrbcus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.