Social Security Claiming Decisions: Survey Evidence / John B. Shoven, Sita Nataraj Slavov, David A. Wise.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shoven, John B.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Slavov, Sita Nataraj.

Wise, David A.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w23729.

NBER working paper series no. w23729

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Social Security Claiming Decisions

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2017.

Summary:

While research shows that there are large gains in lifetime wealth from delaying claiming Social Security, most people claim at or before full retirement age. We fielded an original, nationally representative survey to gain insight into people's rationales for their Social Security claiming decisions, their satisfaction with their past claiming decisions, and how they financed any gap between retirement and claiming. Common rationales for claiming Social Security before full retirement age include stopping work, liquidity, poor health, and concerns about future benefit cuts due to policy changes. Claiming upon stopping work and claiming at full retirement age appear to be viewed as social norms. But while Social Security claiming is strongly associated with stopping work, the roughly quarter of the sample who have a gap of two or more years between retirement and claiming used employer-sponsored pensions and other saving to finance the delay. Individuals who claimed at full retirement age are more satisfied with their claiming decisions than individuals who claimed early or delayed. There is little evidence that claiming decisions and rationales for claiming are correlated with financial literacy or knowledge of Social Security rules.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2017.