Can the Actuarial Reduction for Social Security Early Retirement Still Be Right
The option to claim Social Security benefits earlier than the program’s Full Retirement Age, in exchange for receiving an actuarially reduced benefit, is a key feature of the nation’s Social Security program. This principle remained in place when Congress increased the Full Retirement Age from 65 to 67. Most workers choose to claim early and retire on the reduced benefits. The option to claim early was enacted over 50 years ago, when Congress set 62 as the program’s Earliest Age of Eligibility. To make up for the extra three years of benefit payments, those claiming at 62 received 20 percent less in monthly benefits than if they had claimed at 65. Despite a significant increase in life expectancy in the intervening years, benefits claimed at 62 today are still about 20 percent less than benefits claimed at 65. This brief asks whether this actuarial reduction is still correct...
Should You Buy an Annuity from Social Security
A key challenge many households entering retire-ment face is how to use their savings as a source of income. As 401(k)s replace traditional defined benefit pensions and as Social Security replaces a smaller share of household pre-retirement earnings, draw-ing an income from savings becomes increasingly important. Households have three traditional options. First, they could put their savings in safe assets, preserving the value of their principal, and live on the interest. Second, they could invest their savings in a portfolio of stocks and bonds and draw out an income. Third, they could buy an annuity from an insurance compa-ny, giving up their savings in exchange for a lifetime income. In addition to these three traditional options, households could use their savings to “buy” an an-nuity from Social Security: they could delay claiming their Social Security benefits to get a higher monthly benefit at an older age, using their savings in the interim to pay current expenses. The savings used is the “price” and the increase in monthly benefits is the annuity it “buys.”
The Use of Qualitative Information in Macro-Economic Policy Analysis
The majority of macro-economic policy models takes for granted that conflicts among objectives can be assessed by means of a tradeoff analysis. Such tradeoffs imply that sacrifices and benefits of various impacts of decisions can be measured on a cardinal scale, so that a conventional macro-economic utility or welfare analysis can be applied.