TY  - JOUR
AU  - Coile,Courtney
AU  - Diamond,Peter
AU  - Gruber,Jonathan
AU  - Jousten,Alain
TI  - Delays in Claiming Social Security Benefits
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7318
PY  - 1999
Y2  - August 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7318
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7318.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Courtney Coile
Department of Economics
Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA  02481
Tel: 781/283-2408
Fax: 781/283-2177
E-Mail: ccoile@wellesley.edu

Peter A. Diamond
Department of Economics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
50 Memorial Drive, Room E52-344
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-3363
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: pdiamond@mit.edu

Jonathan Gruber
MIT Department of Economics
E52-355
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-8892
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu

Alain Jousten
HEC Ecole de gestion de l'Université de Liège
7 Boulevard du Rectorat
Bât. B31 Boîte 41
4000 Liege 1
BELGIUM
Tel: +32 4 366  3198
E-Mail: ajousten@ulg.ac.be
AB  - This paper focuses on Social Security benefit claiming behavior, a take-up decision that has been ignored in the previous literature.  Using financial calculations and simulations based on an expected utility maximization model, we show that delaying benefit claim for a period of time after retirement is optimal in a wide variety of cases and that gains from delay may be significant.  We find that approximately 10% of men retiring before their 62nd birthday delay claiming for at least one year after eligibility.  We estimate hazard and probit models using data from the New Beneficiary Data System to test four cross-sectional predictions.  While the data suggest that too few men delay, we find that the pattern of delays by early retirees is generally consistent with the hypotheses generated by our theoretical model.
ER  -