Research
Older Workers Claim Social Security While Working, Upending Beliefs About Raising the Retirement Age
Policy Note | Challenging the widespread assumption that people claim their retirement benefits only when they retire, more than one-fifth of older workers in the United States start claiming Social Security benefits as soon as they are eligible, even while working for pay. Low-income older workers are more than three times as likely as high-income workers to claim early, indicating a reliance on Social Security payments to supplement low wages. Those who claim before the full retirement age...
Policy Note | Unpaid care work — the vast majority of such work in the United States — is primarily shouldered by economically vulnerable people. The costs associated with unpaid care work compound existing economic insecurity, leading to higher rates of poverty in old age. It is essential to support informal caregivers by recognizing caregiving as work and expanding their access to social safety net programs and providing paid family care leave.
Policy Note | Up to 40 percent of middle-income workers are at risk of downward mobility into poverty or near-poverty in retirement because of an inefficient retirement system that disproportionately benefits those with high incomes. Universal retirement accounts and providing workers with more equitable and better targeted tax incentives are among the best methods to supplement Social Security and prevent downward mobility in retirement.
Rather than being "self-financing," New York's Hudson Yards project cost the city $2.2 billion in costs, largely due to tax breaks provided by the city to incentivize development and standard development risks and costs.
Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs), proposed in the 2018 book Rescuing Retirement, are universal individual accounts funded throughout a worker’s career by employer and employee contributions and a refundable tax credit. If GRAs were implemented in 2018,1.5 million seniors would be saved from poverty or near poverty by 2025. This increases to 3.6 million seniors by 2035 and 8.1 million seniors by 2045.
- If we do nothing to reform the current retirement system, the number of poor or near-poor people over the age of 62 will increase by 25% between 2018 and 2045, from 17.5 million to 21.8 million.
- If the GRA were implemented in 2018, 8.1 million seniors would be saved from old-age poverty or near poverty by the year 2045.
Author: Teresa Ghilarducci, Michael Papadopoulos, and Anthony Webb
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Raising Social Security’s Full Retirement Age leaves all workers with two bad choices: working longer or living on reduced monthly benefits.
This report documents the growth in older workers’ unstable and low-wage jobs from 2005 to 2015. By 2015, nearly 25% of older workers were in bad jobs.
This report demonstrates how low and decreasing retirement plan coverage rates and the shift from traditional defined benefit pension plans to 401(k)-type plans are threatening New Yorkers’ financial readiness for retirement.
Older workers have not been able to save adequately for retirement.
