In response to a "crisis" in Social Security financing two decades ago Congress implemented an increase in the Normal Retirement Age (NRA) of two months per year for cohorts born in 1938 and after. These cohorts began reaching retirement age in 2000. This paper studies the effects of these benefit cuts on recent retirement behavior. The evidence strongly suggests that the mean retirement age of the affected cohorts has increased by about half as much as the increase in the NRA. If older workers continue to increase their labor supply in the same way, there will be important implications for the estimates of Social Security trust fund exhaustion that have played such a major role in recent discussions of Social Security reform.
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Paper provided by Collegio Carlo Alberto in its series Carlo Alberto Notebooks with number
33.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Robin L. Lumsdaine & James H. Stock & David A. Wise, 1996.
"Why Are Retirement Rates So High at Age 65?,"
NBER Chapters,
in: Advances in the Economics of Aging, pages 61-82
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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