When to claim Social Security benefits—essentially, whether to accept smaller benefits starting at a younger time or larger benefits at an older age—is the subject of widespread debate. Image: Steve Heap/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe trend toward claiming Social Security benefits at ever-later ages has been even steeper than has been commonly reported, a study has said, suggesting that the trend toward extending working careers also is larger than reported.
The study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College said that most of the focus has been on SSA data showing the number of persons claiming benefits in a given year at ages 62-70. That is “informative,” it said, “but when the size of the group turning 62 is increasing substantially each year, the claims data underestimate the trend toward later claiming.”
“That is, the data will show age-62 claimants making up a larger portion of total new claimants in a given year even if a smaller percentage of those age 62 claim immediately,” it said.
When to Claim?
When to claim Social Security benefits—essentially, whether to accept smaller benefits starting at a younger time or larger benefits at an older age—is the subject of widespread debate.
They can be claimed as early as age 62 but there is a reduction on a sliding scale for those drawing benefits before their “full” retirement age—which varies by year of birth and this year is 66 and 10 months. (In addition, there is an offset against continued earnings before full retirement age.) There are enhanced benefits for delaying beyond full retirement age up to age 70, after which there no longer is an incentive to wait.
As the full retirement age has increased, there also has been an increase in waiting to draw those benefits. For women, for example, 34 percent began at age 62 in 2019 but only 27 percent in 2013, while the figures for men were 31 and 26 percent. Similarly, 25 percent of women started benefits at age 67 or later in 2023 compared with 20 percent in 2019; for men, the figures were 26 and 19 percent.
It added, though, that a look at trends over many years must take into account that in the late 1990s the oldest of the Baby Boom generation started hitting age 62; between 1997 and 2023, the number of persons annually turning that age more than doubled to 4.3 million. In 2010, 16 percent of those between 62 and 70 were age 62.
Data taking that into account “reflect the uptick in labor force activity beginning in the mid-1990s – with longer work lives leading to later claiming – and show a much larger decline over the last three decades than the claim-age data.”
The number of those age 62 among those between that age and 70 has now fallen back to 12 percent, it said, as only the youngest of the Baby Boomers have not yet passed that age.
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