TY  - JOUR
AU  - Mitchell,Olivia S.
AU  - Phillips,John W.R.
TI  - Retirement Responses to Early Social Security Benefit Reductions
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7963
PY  - 2000
Y2  - October 2000
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7963
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7963.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Olivia S. Mitchell
University of Pennsylvania
Wharton School
3620 Locust Walk, St 3000 SH-DH
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6302
Tel: 215-898-0424
Fax: 215/898-0310
E-Mail: mitchelo@wharton.upenn.edu

John W R. Phillips
National Institute on Aging/National Institutes of
Division of Behavioral and Social Research
7201 Wisconsin Avenue
Gateway Building, Suite 533
Bethesda, MD 20892-9205 
Tel: 301-496-3138
Fax: 301-402-0051
E-Mail: john.phillips@nih.gov
AB  - This paper evaluates potential responses to reductions in early Social Security retirement benefits.  Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) linked to administrative records, we find that Social Security coverage is quite uneven in the older population: one-quarter of respondents in their late 50's lacks coverage under the Disability Insurance program, and one-fifth lacks coverage for old-age benefits.  Among those eligible for benefits, respondents who subsequently retired early appear quite similar initially to those who later filed for normal retirement benefits, but both groups were healthier and better educated than those who later filed for disability benefits.  Next we investigate the potential impact of curtailing, and then eliminating, early Social Security benefits.  A life-cycle model of retirement behavior provides estimated parameters used to simulate the effects of cutting early Social Security benefits on retirement pathways.  We find that cutting early Social Security benefits would boost the probability of normal retirement by twice as much as it would the probability of disability retirement.
ER  -