It seems people are getting the message: delay retirement and put off Social Security, and come in for a larger benefit when you do claim.

That's a study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, which looked at unpublished Social Security Administration data and found that, although superficially it looks as if higher percentages of people are claiming benefits at younger ages, that's not exactly the case.

More people appear to be claiming benefits at age 62, and that's been happening for the last 20 years. But that's because that segment of the population is larger, not because the percentage of people age 62 who are claiming benefits is increasing. According to Alicia Munnell, director of the CRR, "The number of eligible participants turning 62 began to increase around 1997, rising from 829,000 in 1997 to around 1.4 million in 2013."

Continue Reading for Free

Register and gain access to:

  • Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.