Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses to Changes in the Full Retirement Age

Luc Behaghel and David Blau

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We use a US Social Security reform as a quasi-experiment to provide evidence on framing effects in retirement behavior. The reform increased the full retirement age (FRA) from 65 to 66 in two-month increments per year of birth. We find strong evidence that the spike in the benefit claiming hazard at 65 moved in lockstep along with the FRA. Results on self-reported retirement and exit from employment go in the same direction. The responsiveness to the new FRA is stronger for people with higher cognitive skills. We interpret the findings as evidence of reference dependence with loss aversion.

Keywords: Intertemporal Consumer Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving; Social Security and Public Pensions; Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-labor Market Discrimination; Retirement; Retirement Policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (115)

Published in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2012, 4 (4), pp.41-67. ⟨10.1257/pol.4.4.41⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses to Changes in the Full Retirement Age (2012)
Working Paper: Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses to Changes in the Full Retirement Age (2012)
Working Paper: Framing social security reform: Behavioral responses to changes in the full retirement age (2010)
Working Paper: Framing social security reform: Behavioral responses to changes in the full retirement age (2010)
Working Paper: Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses to Changes in the Full Retirement Age (2010)
Working Paper: Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses to Changes in the Full Retirement Age (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00772844

DOI: 10.1257/pol.4.4.41

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().