To raise or not to raise the retirement age for Social Security, that is the question one study examined. (Photo: Shutterstock)
With longer retirements, thanks to longer lifespans, and the financial challenges faced by Social Security, discussion periodically resumes about whether to raise the retirement age.
Making people wait till they're older to claim benefits would certainly cut down on the number of years, on average, that people collect benefits.
But it would also put a lot of people at risk. Richard W. Johnson, an economist at the Urban Institute who specializes in employment and retirement decisions made by older Americans, said in a report issued by the Urban Institute that raising the retirement age could cut approximately 27 percent of the long-term shortfall faced by Social Security.
And if the full retirement age is raised, Johnson said, the early retirement age would have to be raised too.
If the early retirement age is not raised, those who file for early retirement would see a huge penalty in their monthly benefit.
Johnson explained that at present, those who don't wait till FRA but file at age 62 instead see their benefits cut permanently by 30 percent. If the FRA were raised to, say, 69, and the early retirement age were not raised, those early filers would see their benefits cut by 40 percent.
That makes it tough to keep up with monthly bills, and would be a huge penalty for those who cannot work past 62.
But even raising the early age brings big problems, Johnson said in the report, estimating that if it were raised to 65 "25 percent of workers aged 62 to 64 would face serious financial problems; that represents the share that is not working and has a health-related work limitation," the report said.
Other problems facing these hypothetical early retirees include health problems that could limit their work ability but not be severe enough to let them qualify for Social Security Disability; the reluctance of employers to hire older workers; and the fact that gains in life expectancy have mostly benefited those with better incomes and education.
"We were seeing improvements in health status until 2000, but those have leveled off and we don't know what will happen in the future," Johnson is quoted saying in the report. He added, "The most concerning part is we're now seeing some indications that health status is declining for people in their sixties now, and for people in their forties and fifties, mainly due to rising obesity rates. All of that will make it much more difficult to raise retirement ages."
In addition, lower-income workers would be hit harder by such age increases, since they're more likely to retire early and thus be stuck with those much-lower benefits for life. On the other hand, median income for older households that had no health-related work limits actually increased 34 percent from 1996 to 2014, adjusted for household size and inflation, thanks to the better chance of their continuing to work and collect wages.
Johnson had some suggestions for how to protect the most vulnerable from higher retirement ages: allowing exemptions for workers in physically demanding jobs; making the Social Security benefit formula more progressive than it is now to provide better benefits to low earners; and not only expanding employment services and training, but also unemployment insurance for older workers.
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Marlene Satter
Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.
