Early Social Security claiming declines

The Wall Street Journal reports on new research from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College showing that the percentage of Americans filing for early – meaning, reduced – Social Security retirement benefits has fallen in recent years.

A new study from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College—titled Trends in Social Security Claiming —finds that, in 2013, 36% of men and 40% of women who turned 62 claimed Social Security. Sixty-two is the youngest age at which most people become eligible for benefits.

Those figures differ significantly from the numbers published by the Social Security Administration, which estimated that 42% of men and 48% of women who claimed retiree benefits in 2013 were 62.

What’s more, according to the Boston College study, “the share of people claiming Social Security retired-worker benefits when they attain age 62 has been falling since the mid-1990s…a decline [that] is fully consistent with the increase in the average retirement age.”