Poster Paper:
Working and Claiming Behavior at Social Security's Early Entitlement Age: How Measurement Affects Findings
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
The study uses a recent extract of the Social Security Administration’s long-standing (circa 1938) longitudinal Continuous Work History Sample (CWHS) file merged to additional administrative earnings, claiming and death data. By observing both work and claiming for fully insured workers, I am able to assess the extent to which these two different behaviors move together. Such an assessment can assign a type of rough upper bound around the question of whether the EEA—which is a retired worker claiming variable--would be expected to be effective as a policy lever to reduce the number of workers who cease engagement in substantial work at age 62.
By taking advantage of the availability of uncapped earnings data beginning in 1982, I am also able to examine trends in working and claiming at age 62 by lifetime earnings deciles. This level of detail allows me to cast light on both the idea that workers are responding to the EEA as a “signal” to retire as a part of a myopic “herd,” and the idea that low earning workers would be expected to be either the least informed about Social Security claiming rules or the most myopic. These ideas are partially based on surveys of intent, rather than on observations of actual behavior.
In the observable administrative data, the proportion of fully insured workers who ceased work and claimed roughly simultaneously at age 62 was 12 percent for men and 10 percent for women in 2006. The proportion of men claiming at exactly-age 62 declined by 6 percentage points from 1999 to 2006, even though the “signal” remained at age 62. When broken down by lifetime earnings decile, the proportion of men in this category in 2006 ranged from 2.5% for the bottom decile to 4.5% for the top decile, with deciles 3-8 generally hovering around 12%.
Overall, I found that the distribution of risk in the underlying population did not appear to be limited to easily identifiable groups of individuals. While it is sometimes implied that “evidence-based decision making” is a new invention, this conclusion was also reached by the 1935 Committee on Economic Security based on the best available evidence at that time. This paper highlights the importance of continuity in measurement and research over time, as it highlights the contributions that the process of continually building upon, adding to, and refining an existing data file over a span of almost 80 years can make towards supplying policy makers and the public with the tools to make a fully-informed decision.
