The Social Security Retirement Earnings Test, Retirement, Benefit Claiming, and the Effects of Abolishing the Earnings Test with and without Individual Accounts.

This project will use data from the Health and Retirement Study to investigate how the Social Security retirement earnings test affects retirement behavior, benefit claiming and retirement incomes; the effects of abolishing the earnings test between early entitlement and full retirement ages; and how the earnings test will affect these outcomes if proposals made by The President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security were to be enacted into law. Research Questions: How does the Social Security earnings test affect retirement behavior, benefit claiming and retirement incomes? How will these outcomes change if the Social Security reforms proposed by The President’s Commission are enacted into law?