IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mrr/papers/wp127.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Changes in Social Security Affect Retirement Trends

Author

Listed:
  • Alan Gustman

    (Dartmouth College and NBER)

  • Thomas Steinmeier

    (Texas Tech University)

Abstract

For married men, we find the conventional view of retirement trends -- that the long term trend to early retirement has been reversed -- is partially contradicted by recent data. Specifically, descriptive data collected from both the Census and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) suggest that for those in their fifties, over the periods 1992 to 1998 and 1998 to 2004, the trend to early retirement reasserted itself and labor force participation fell. In contrast, for those in their sixties, there was an increase in work. Similarly, for those 65 and over, the amount of work increased. Simulations with a structural retirement model suggest that the recent acceleration of the trend to early retirement for those in their fifties is not the result of the change in Social Security rules. According to our model, changes in Social Security rules are expected to reduce the number of those in their early sixties who are working. This suggests that forces other than changing Social Security rules account for the observed increase in work by those in their early sixties, and that the effects of these forces are stronger than those suggested by the trends in descriptive data. Lastly, the analysis suggests that changing Social Security rules do help to explain the increase in work by those age 65 and older. The effects of these rule changes encourage workers to remain in their long term jobs for a longer time, encourage some to return from retirement to full time work, and encourage more partial retirement. Nevertheless, the changes in retirement induced by Social Security changes have been modest. Due to Social Security changes, the number of 65 year old married men at work increases by about two percentage points at ages 65 and 66, with slightly smaller changes at 67 to 69. Given the low basic labor force participation at 65 and 66, with 20 to 25 percent at full time work, and another 17 percent at part time work, the percentage increases in work due to Social Security changes are three or four times higher.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan Gustman & Thomas Steinmeier, 2006. "How Changes in Social Security Affect Retirement Trends," Working Papers wp127, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:mrr:papers:wp127
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://mrdrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/Papers/pdf/wp127.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph F. Quinn, 1999. "Has the Early Retirement Trend Reversed?," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 424, Boston College Department of Economics.
    2. Coile, Courtney & Diamond, Peter & Gruber, Jonathan & Jousten, Alain, 2002. "Delays in claiming social security benefits," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(3), pages 357-385, June.
    3. Alan L. Gustman & Thomas L. Steinmeier, 2002. "Retirement and the Stock Market Bubble," NBER Working Papers 9404, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Blau, David M. & Goodstein, Ryan, 2007. "What Explains Trends in Labor Force Participation of Older Men in the United States?," IZA Discussion Papers 2991, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Bo MacInnis, 2009. "Social Security and the Joint Trends in Labor Supply and Benefits Receipt Among Older Men," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2009-22, Center for Retirement Research, revised Oct 2009.
    3. Chinhui Juhn & Kristin McCue, 2012. "Workplace Characteristics and Employment of Older Workers," Working Papers 12-31, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alan L. Gustman & Thomas Steinmeier, 2008. "How Changes in Social Security Affect Recent Retirement Trends," NBER Working Papers 14105, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Mastrobuoni, Giovanni, 2009. "Labor supply effects of the recent social security benefit cuts: Empirical estimates using cohort discontinuities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1224-1233, December.
    3. Coile Courtney, 2004. "Retirement Incentives and Couples' Retirement Decisions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-30, July.
    4. Alan L. Gustman & Thomas L. Steinmeier, 2008. "Projecting behavioral responses to the next generation of retirement policies," Research in Labor Economics, in: Work, Earnings and Other Aspects of the Employment Relation, pages 141-195, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    5. Gustman, Alan L. & Steinmeier, Thomas L., 2012. "Policy effects in hyperbolic vs. exponential models of consumption and retirement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(5), pages 465-473.
    6. Alicia H. Munnell & Steven A. Sass, 2007. "The Labor Supply of Older Americans," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2007-12, Center for Retirement Research, revised Jun 2007.
    7. James Poterba & Steven Venti & David Wise, 2011. "The Composition and Drawdown of Wealth in Retirement," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(4), pages 95-118, Fall.
    8. Chai, Jingjing & Maurer, Raimond H. & Mitchell, Olivia S. & Rogalla, Ralph, 2011. "Lifecycle impacts of the financial and economic crisis on household optimal consumption, portfolio choice, and labor supply," CFS Working Paper Series 2011/23, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    9. Jousten, Alain, 2001. "Life-cycle modeling of bequests and their impact on annuity valuation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 149-177, January.
    10. Marjan, MAES, 2008. "Does the dismantlement of early retirement schemes increase unemployment in Belgium ?," Discussion Papers (ECON - Département des Sciences Economiques) 2008041, Université catholique de Louvain, Département des Sciences Economiques.
    11. Fabio Pammolli & Pietro Rizza & Nicola Carmine Salerno, 2004. "Regole pensionistiche e incentivi al prolungamento della vita lavorativa: analisi del caso italiano," Working Papers CERM 06-2004, Competitività, Regole, Mercati (CERM).
    12. Bronshtein, Gila & Scott, Jason & Shoven, John B. & Slavov, Sita Nataraj, 2020. "Leaving big money on the table: Arbitrage opportunities in delaying social security," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 261-272.
    13. Irena Dushi & Leora Friedberg & Anthony Webb, 2021. "Is the Adjustment of Social Security Benefits Actuarially Fair, and If So, for Whom?," SCEPA working paper series. 2021-04, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.
    14. Phitawat Poonpolkul & Ponpoje Porapakkarm & Nada Wasi, 2024. "Aging, inadequacy, and fiscal constraint: The case of Thailand," International Studies of Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(1), pages 35-67, March.
    15. repec:pri:cepsud:136mastrobuoni is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Leora Friedberg, 2000. "The Labor Supply Effects of the Social Security Earnings Test," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(1), pages 48-63, February.
    17. Lusardi, Annamaria & Mitchell, Olivia S., 2007. "Baby Boomer retirement security: The roles of planning, financial literacy, and housing wealth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 205-224, January.
    18. J. Michael Collins & John Karl Scholz & Ananth Seshadri, 2013. "The Assets and Liabilities of Cohorts: The Antecedents of Retirement Security," Working Papers wp296, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    19. Maurer, Raimond & Mitchell, Olivia S., 2021. "Older peoples' willingness to delay social security claiming," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(3), pages 410-425, July.
    20. John B. Shoven & Sita Nataraj Slavov, 2012. "When Does It Pay to Delay Social Security? The Impact of Mortality, Interest Rates, and Program Rules," NBER Working Papers 18210, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Satoshi Shimizutani & Takashi Oshio, 2016. "Public Pension Benefits Claiming Behaviour: new Evidence from the Japanese Study on Ageing and Retirement," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 67(3), pages 235-256, September.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:mrr:papers:wp127. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: MRRC Administrator (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isumius.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.