(Bloomberg) -- The baby boomers are getting ready toretire, and they won't let a stock market selloff stopthem.

U.S. stocks recently concluded the worst January since 2009and have continued falling into February.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index is now down 10 percent fromits peak last year.

You might expect aging boomers to postpone their retirementsanxiously after watching stocks tumble. Instead, nearly403,000 American workers and their spouses were awarded their firstSocial Security checks in January, thehighest monthly total in three years.

According to Social Security data, 3.2 million workers andspouses qualified for retirement benefits in the last 12 months, up3.3 percent from the previous year.

That’s not a surprise to retirement researchers.

People retire for many reasons, including health, job security,and hitting those magic birthdays when Social Security or pensionbenefits start. But there’s no evidence that short-termfluctuations in the stock market influence when workers call itquits.

A single-year rise or drop in the S&P 500 has nostatistically significant effect on retirement rates, according toCourtney Coile and Phillip B. Levine, economics professors atWellesley College.

Only huge, long-term moves in the stock market affect retirementtiming, the researchers found, and only for well-educated Americanswho are most likely to own stocks.

Over a 10-year period, an extra 77 percent rise in the S&P500 index will tend to increase the retirement rate for college-educated 62-to-69-year-olds by 1.5 percentage points, which is 12percent more people retiring compared with theaverage.

Coile and Levine find no evidence that big, 10-year stock marketmoves affect younger workers or those with less education andfewer stocks.

All this isn't to say that falling markets aren’t botheringAmericans who are near retirement age.

Dropping stock prices make the difficult switch from earningmoney to spending your savings even harder, says Mark Beaver, afinancial planner at the firm Keeler & Nadler in Dublin,Ohio. “Even if they’re in exceptional shape, it’s alwaysstressful,” he says. “That’s a big emotional and financialdecision.”

Financial advisers have a variety of strategies to ease theseworries.

They can run projections based on the market’s long-term recordshowing that account balances almost always recover from bigselloffs.

They also can make sure that investors approaching retirementhave an extra cushion of cash, money that can be spent early inretirement without the need to sell stocks when they’re at a lowpoint.

Andrew Houte, a financial planner at Next Level Planning &Wealth Management in Brookfield, Wis., recommends that retireeshave as much as three to five years of cash. “It does a lot for thepsyche,” he says. “You do not want the market hijacking youremotional state.”

There’s reason to suspect boomers today are more patientand unflappable investors than previous generations were. The past15 years, including the financial crisis and the 2000-02 tech bust,have delivered some rough lessons on how to ride outvolatility.

“We’ve had these big boom-bust cycles,” Wellesley College’sCoile says. “Investors may have gotten used to the idea that you dosee big fluctuations—in both directions.”

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