Who Is 62 Enough ? Identifying Respondents Eligible for Social Security Early Retirement Benefits in the Health and Retirement Study

Workers are not instantly eligible for Social
Security retirement benefits on their 62nd
birthdays, nor can they receive benefits in the
month they turn 62. This note discusses how
well researchers can do using data from the
Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to identify
respondents old enough to receive and report
early Social Security retirement benefits. It
shows that only some workers aged 62 at the
time of an HRS interview will be “62 enough” to
have received a Social Security benefit and
reported it in the survey.
In general, workers become eligible for a
retirement benefit the month after they turn 62,
and they may receive their first payment the
month after that. Until recently, payments were
received very early in the month, but in mid1997 and later, the Social Security Administration (SSA) staggered benefit payments over the
course of a month. Therefore, many beneficiaries will not be able to report the receipt of their
first benefit payment until the third month after
their birthday in more recent HRS interviews.
This note describes the best approach for
approximating the pool of HRS respondents
who are old enough to have reported the
receipt of their first retirement benefit. It then
applies the procedure to an analysis by
Burkhauser, Couch, and Phillips, who used the
1994 HRS data to distinguish between those
who took early retirement benefits upon turning
62 and those who postponed the receipt of
benefits. Because these authors did not
provide for respondents who were not “62
enough” to receive a benefit at the time of the
interview, they understated the proportion of
respondents who took retirement benefits at
age 62.