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SSA Publishes Report on the Effects of Retirement Age Increases and Mortality Adjustments
On March 22, 2021, the Office of Research, Statistics, and Policy Analysis of the Social Security Administration (SSA) released its research report, Research Summary: Projecting the Effects of Retirement Age Increases and Mortality Adjustments. According to the summary, numerous Social Security proposals have recommended Full Retirement Age (FRA) increases due to overall life expectancy increases. The FRA increases would affect monthly and lifetime Social Security retirement benefits in multifaceted ways due to increasing differential mortality.
Key findings include:
- When solely raising the full retirement age (FRA), it would reduce comprehensive Social Security retirement benefits relative to current law. However, the effects of these benefit reductions would vary because of differences in individuals’ reliance on Social Security for retirement income, among other factors; and
- As compared to only raising the FRA, applying a cohort-based mortality adjustment targeted to offset increasing differential mortality would lower poverty rates and increase lifetime benefits for some groups.
The report is available here.