IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crr/crrwps/wp2016-14.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Calculating Expected Social Security Benefits by Race, Education, and Claiming Age

Author

Listed:
  • Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher
  • Jorge D. Ramos-Mercado

Abstract

The option to claim Social Security before the full retirement age (FRA) has been around for over 50 years. But claiming benefits early has an inherent trade-off: more years of income are received in exchange for an actuarially reduced monthly benefit. The actuarial reduction is designed to be “fair” for the average worker in that, regardless of the age at which a person claims, he can expect to receive the same expected present value (EPV) of his lifetime benefits. Aside from a period of high interest rates in the 1980s, this equality has roughly held for the average worker since the inception of the actuarial reduction. But the key word here is average. Workers who live less long than the average might maximize the EPV of benefits by claiming early, while those who live longer than average might benefit more from delay. This paper analyzes this issue by calculating the EPV of Social Security benefits by race, education, and gender, all three of which are correlates of both mortality and earnings.

Suggested Citation

  • Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher & Jorge D. Ramos-Mercado, 2016. "Calculating Expected Social Security Benefits by Race, Education, and Claiming Age," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2016-14, Center for Retirement Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:crr:crrwps:wp2016-14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp_2016-14.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cutler, David M. & Lange, Fabian & Meara, Ellen & Richards-Shubik, Seth & Ruhm, Christopher J., 2011. "Rising educational gradients in mortality: The role of behavioral risk factors," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1174-1187.
    2. Andrew G. Biggs, 2011. "Social Security: The Story of Its Past and a Vision for Its Future," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 6033, September.
    3. Kelly Haverstick & Margarita Sapozhnikov & Robert Triest & Natalia Zhivan, 2007. "A New Approach to Raising Social Security's Earliest Eligibility Age," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2007-19, Center for Retirement Research, revised Oct 2007.
    4. Cristia, Julian P., 2009. "Rising mortality and life expectancy differentials by lifetime earnings in the United States," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 984-995, September.
    5. Jeffrey Brown & Jeffrey B. Liebman & Joshua Pollet, 2002. "Appendix. Estimating Life Tables That Reflect Socioeconomic Differences In Mortality," NBER Chapters, in: The Distributional Aspects of Social Security and Social Security Reform, pages 447-458, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Feldstein, Martin & Liebman, Jeffrey B. (ed.), 2002. "The Distributional Aspects of Social Security and Social Security Reform," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226241067, October.
    7. Martin Feldstein & Jeffrey B. Liebman, 2002. "The Distributional Aspects of Social Security and Social Security Reform," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number feld02-1, March.
    8. Cassio Turra & Irma Elo, 2008. "The Impact of Salmon Bias on the Hispanic Mortality Advantage: New Evidence from Social Security Data," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 27(5), pages 515-530, October.
    9. Anne Case & Angua Deaton, 2015. "Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century," Working Papers 15078.full.pdf, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
    10. Barry P. Bosworth & Gary Burtless & Kan Zhang, 2015. "Sources of Increasing Differential Mortality Among the Aged by Socioeconomic Status," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2015-10, Center for Retirement Research.
    11. John Bound & Arline Geronimus & Javier Rodriguez & Timothy Waidmann, 2014. "The Implications of Differential Trends in Mortality for Social Security Policy," Working Papers wp314, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    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. 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.

    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. 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.
    2. Owen Davis & Siavash Radpour, 2021. "Older Workers' Wages Are Growing - But Not Fast Enough," SCEPA publication series. 2021-04, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.
    3. Li Tan & Cory Koedel, 2019. "The Effects of Differential Income Replacement and Mortality on U.S. Social Security Redistribution," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(2), pages 613-637, October.
    4. Alan J. Auerbach & Kerwin K. Charles & Courtney C. Coile & William Gale & Dana Goldman & Ronald Lee & Charles M. Lucas & Peter R. Orszag & Louise M. Sheiner & Bryan Tysinger & David N. Weil & Justin W, 2017. "How the Growing Gap in Life Expectancy May Affect Retirement Benefits and Reforms," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 42(3), pages 475-499, July.
    5. Laun, Tobias & Markussen, Simen & Vigtel, Trond Christian & Wallenius, Johanna, 2018. "Health, Longevity and Pension Reform," Working Paper Series 2018:9, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    6. S. Brock Blomberg & Thomas DeLeire & Gregory D. Hess, 2006. "The (After) Life-Cycle Theory of Religious Contributions," CESifo Working Paper Series 1854, CESifo.
    7. Anne Case & Angus Deaton, 2017. "Mortality and Morbidity in the 21st Century," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 48(1 (Spring), pages 397-476.
    8. Eytan Sheshinski & Frank N. Caliendo, 2021. "Social Security and the increasing longevity gap," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 23(1), pages 29-52, February.
    9. Bommier, Antoine & Leroux, Marie-Louise & Lozachmeur, Jean-Marie, 2011. "On the public economics of annuities with differential mortality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 612-623.
    10. Sass, Steven A. & Sun, Wei & Webb, Anthony, 2013. "Social Security claiming decision of married men and widow poverty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 119(1), pages 20-23.
    11. Hudomiet, Péter & Hurd, Michael D. & Rohwedder, Susann, 2021. "Forecasting mortality inequalities in the U.S. based on trends in midlife health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    12. Olivera, Javier, 2019. "The distribution of pension wealth in Europe," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 13(C), pages 30-42.
    13. Alicia H. Munnell & Alex Golub-Sass & Nadia Karamcheva, 2009. "Strange But True: Free Loan From Social Security," Issues in Brief ib2009-9-6, Center for Retirement Research, revised Mar 2009.
    14. Haan, Peter & Kemptner, Daniel & Lüthen, Holger, 2020. "The rising longevity gap by lifetime earnings – Distributional implications for the pension system," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 17(C).
    15. Janet Currie & Hannes Schwandt & Josselin Thuilliez, 2020. "Pauvreté, Egalité, Mortalité: mortality (in)equality in France and the United States," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(1), pages 197-231, January.
    16. Venti, Steven & Wise, David A., 2015. "The long reach of education: Early retirement," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 6(C), pages 133-148.
    17. Janet Currie & Hannes Schwandt, 2016. "Mortality Inequality: The Good News from a County-Level Approach," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 29-52, Spring.
    18. Sánchez-Romero, Miguel & Prskawetz, Alexia, 2017. "Redistributive effects of the US pension system among individuals with different life expectancy," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 10(C), pages 51-74.
    19. Christoph Schinke, 2012. "Inheritance in Germany 1911 to 2009: A Mortality Multiplier Approach," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 462, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    20. Bagchi, Shantanu, 2019. "Differential mortality and the progressivity of social security," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 1-1.

    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:crr:crrwps:wp2016-14. 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: 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.