Incentives to Delay In Claiming Social Security?

Periodically we post about an article on Social Security, and one of the hot topics of late is when to start drawing Social Security. Do you take Social Security early before you reach your full retirement age, do you wait until that magic number (66 for many) or do you delay taking Social Security to later, even age 70? When you start to claim your Social Security benefit does have ramifications. We have also seen articles about the future viability of the Social Security program.

The Wall Street Journal ran an article recently about a recently published paper on the topic. The article, Here’s How to Get More People to Delay Claiming Social Security offers a view of regarding making Social Security more viable.

Global aging paired with pension shortfalls have led many governments to raise retirement ages and cut benefits. But this approach tends to be unpopular, as demonstrated by loud protests we’ve seen over the last few years from Greece and France to Detroit and, soon, Puerto Rico.

The article explains that the authors offer this proposal to increase the solvency of Social Security by “replacing the current Social Security delayed retirement credit with a lump-sum payment would induce many people to voluntarily defer claiming their Social Security benefits, and many would work more.”

In the article, the authors explain the study they conducted to see if their idea would have merit, and they explain that

What we learned from our study is that many people would be willing to claim later and work longer, if they can get the attractive partial buyout from Social Security. Additionally, many who had initially stated that they wanted their benefit as young as possible, were also most willing to delay and work longer when offered the partial buyout.

The authors explain their idea is designed to be “cost-neutral” thus not adding to the woes regarding Social Security’s long term prospects. The authors also note that  “incentivizing longer work lives could lead to better mental and physical health at older ages for many people, so there could be ample positive social benefits.”

The authors’ paper is published on SSRN. Will They Take the Money and Work? An Empirical Analysis of People’s Willingness to Delay Claiming Social Security Benefits for a Lump Sum. Here is the abstract for the paper:

This paper investigates whether exchanging the Social Security delayed retirement credit, currently paid as an increase in lifetime annuity benefits, for a lump sum would induce later claiming and additional work. We show that people would voluntarily claim about half a year later if the lump sum were paid for claiming any time after the Early Retirement Age, and about two-thirds of a year later if the lump sum were paid only for those claiming after their Full Retirement Age. Overall, people will work one-third to one-half of the additional months, compared to the status quo. Those who would currently claim at the youngest ages are likely to be most responsive to the offer of a lump sum benefit.