“Opinion: How far off are the actuarial adjustments of Social Security benefits?”

Opinion: How far off are the actuarial adjustments of Social Security benefits?,” by Alicia H. Munnell, 

“The stylized fact that high earners live longer and claim later adds a distributional consideration to these findings. At the simplest level — taking the adjustments as given — low earners claim early and are overcharged for that privilege, and high earners claim later and are rewarded roughly correctly. The simple results, however, substantially understate the advantages for high earners. The evaluation of the adjustments presented above was based on the life expectancy of the average worker. If the assessment had been based on the longer and increasing life expectancy of high earners, the delayed retirement credit should be smaller than the current 8% to equalize the cost of early versus late claiming.”

 

LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform):

More reason to claim Social Security later if possible.