IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crr/crrwps/wp2011-10.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Who Retires Early?

Author

Listed:
  • Henry J. Aaron
  • Jean Marie Callan

Abstract

The possibility of increasing the age at which Social Security benefits are first paid merits renewed scrutiny for at least three reasons: • a decrease in overall benefits would imply that those claiming reduced benefits before the 'full benefits age' may accept benefits that seem adequate when claimed but are insufficient when income earnings ends and savings are depleted; • life expectancy has increased; and • an enlarged labor force would increase potential national income and ameliorate projected future deficits. This paper examines differences in personal circumstances between those who retire and those who remain at work for pay at various ages. The findings, based on the Health and Retirement Survey, are that there are differences between these two groups, but they are rather small. Some who claim retirement benefits before the full benefits age would face serious hardship if those benefits were no longer available, however. For that reason, if the age of initial eligibility is increased, consideration should be given to measures targeted on this group. The paper then goes on to consider back-up protections that might be provided to those who now claim early retirement benefits should the age of initial eligibility be increased.

Suggested Citation

  • Henry J. Aaron & Jean Marie Callan, 2011. "Who Retires Early?," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2011-10, Center for Retirement Research, revised May 2011.
  • Handle: RePEc:crr:crrwps:wp2011-10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://crr.bc.edu/working-papers/who-retires-early-ii/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Brooke Helppie McFall & Amanda Sonnega & Robert J. Willis & Peter Hudomiet, 2015. "Occupations and Work Characteristics: Effects on Retirement Expectations and Timing," Working Papers wp331, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    2. Wiktorowicz Justyna & Ziarko Łukasz, 2020. "Individual Factors of Extending the Working Life for People with Disabilities in Poland," Econometrics. Advances in Applied Data Analysis, Sciendo, vol. 24(4), pages 1-14, December.
    3. Candon, David, 2018. "The effect of cancer on the labor supply of employed men over the age of 65," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 184-199.

    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:wp2011-10. 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.