The Risk of Financial Hardship in Retirement: A Cohort Analysis

This paper explores the likely prevalence of hardship in old age for individuals now nearing retirement. We use two decades of longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study to determine what observable demographic, socioeconomic, and financial factors in late middle age predicted economic hardship in old age for the cohort that was nearing retirement age in the mid-1990s. It then uses these findings to predict economic hardship in old age for the cohort nearing retirement age in the mid-2010s. Our analysis suggests that the more recent cohort is likely to realize higher economic insecurity, particularly among men

Working Paper 2015-325

Reductions in the implicit taxation of Social Security benefits from reducing or eliminating the Retirement Earnings Test (RET) are an appealing – and in many cases successful – means of encouraging labor supply of older individuals receiving benefits. The downside, however, is that the same policy reforms can encourage earlier claiming of Social Security benefits, which permanently lowers benefits paid in the future. Depending on the magnitude of the effects on earnings and how households or individuals adjust their consumption and savings decisions, the net effect can be lower incomes at much older ages well beyond when people have retired. We explore the consequences of the 2000 reforms eliminating the RET from the Full Retirement Age to age 69 for the longer-run evolution of income, focusing in particular on the incidence of low income among older women, who are more likely to have become dependent mainly on income from their Social Security benefits. We find that the elimination of the RET increased the likelihood of having low incomes among women in their mid-70s and older – ages at which the lower benefits from claiming earlier outweigh possibly higher income in the period when women or their husbands increased their labor supply.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/115889/1/wp325.pd