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Social Security Benefits, Life Expectancy and Early Retirement

Author

Listed:
  • Qi Li

    (University of Chicago)

  • Juan Pantano

    (Washington University in St. Louis)

  • Daifeng He

    (College of William and Mary)

  • Maria Casanova

    (UCLA)

Abstract

The Social Security Administration computes individual pension benefits using the average survival in the population. However, less educated individuals, and those with lower lifetime incomes, have lower life expectancies than their more educated and richer counterparts. We investigate how heterogeneity in longevity interacts with homogenous social security rules in shaping retirement patterns. In particular, the increase in Social Security benefits for each additional year of work after early retirement age is approximately actuarially fair for individuals with the average longevity. Thus, it is less than actuarially fair for individuals whose life expectancy is lower than average. As a result, individuals with below-average longevity have lower incentives to delay retirement past early retirement age. We estimate a structural dynamic programming model of retirement using microdata from the Health and Retirement Study. We then use the estimated model to simulate retirement behavior under a counterfactual social security system in which individual specific survival odds are used to compute individual benefits. This allow us to investigate the role of actuarial unfairness plays in shaping the observed patterns of early retirement.

Suggested Citation

  • Qi Li & Juan Pantano & Daifeng He & Maria Casanova, 2014. "Social Security Benefits, Life Expectancy and Early Retirement," 2014 Meeting Papers 824, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed014:824
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gustman, Alan L. & Steinmeier, Thomas L., 2001. "How effective is redistribution under the social security benefit formula?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 1-28, October.
    2. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3261-3307 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Jeffrey B. Liebman, 2002. "Redistribution in the Current U.S. Social Security System," NBER Chapters, in: The Distributional Aspects of Social Security and Social Security Reform, pages 11-48, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Lumsdaine, Robin L. & Mitchell, Olivia S., 1999. "New developments in the economic analysis of retirement," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 49, pages 3261-3307, Elsevier.
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