ناراحتی برای فرد بازنشسته ؟ افزایش کامل سن بازنشستگی و تاثیر آن بر فهرست از کار افتادگی تامین اجتماعی

The Social Security Amendments of 1983 reduced the generosity of Social Security retired worker benefits in the U.S. by increasing the program's full retirement age from 65 to 67 and increasing the penalty for claiming benefits at the early retirement age of 62. These changes were phased in gradually, so that individuals born in or before 1937 were unaffected and those born in 1960 or later were fully affected. No corresponding changes were made to the program's disabled worker benefits, and thus the relative generosity of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits increased. In this paper, we investigate the effect of the Amendments on SSDI enrollment by exploiting variation across birth cohorts in the policy-induced reduction in the present value of retired worker benefits. Our findings indicate that the Amendments significantly increased SSDI enrollment since 1983, with an additional 0.6% of men and 0.9% of women between the ages of 45 and 64 receiving SSDI benefits in 2005 as a result of the changes. Our results further indicate that these effects will continue to increase during the next two decades, as those fully exposed to the reduction in retirement benefit generosity reach their fifties and early sixties.

During the last two decades, the fraction of adults in the U.S. receiving benefits from the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program has steadily increased. For example, among individuals between the ages of 45 and 64, the rate of SSDI enrollment rose from 4.5% in 1983 to 6.7% by 2005. A similarly striking increase occurred for younger workers, with the fraction of 25 to 44-year old workers on SSDI rising from 0.7 to 1.6% during this same period. A number of explanations have been advanced for the growth in SSDI enrollment, including a 1984 policy change that liberalized the program's medical eligibility criteria, the aging of the “baby boom” population, and an increase in female labor force attachment that resulted in more women being insured for SSDI (Autor and Duggan, 2006). In this paper, we investigate whether and to what extent a policy-induced reduction in the generosity of Social Security retired worker benefits also contributed to the increase in SSDI enrollment. The Social Security Amendments of 1983, which were signed into law on April 20th of that year, increased the age at which individuals were eligible for their full retirement benefits from 65 to 67 while simultaneously increasing the penalty for claiming benefits at the early retirement age of 62. Combined with an increase in the payroll tax rate and several other provisions,1 the main goal of this legislation was to improve the short and long-term fiscal health of Social Security, also known as the Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program. As Fig. 1 demonstrates, the increase in the full retirement age and in the early retirement penalty was phased in gradually and occurred in two main stages. Individuals born in 1937 or earlier were unaffected by the change, their counterparts born between 1938 and 1959 were partially affected, and those born in 1960 or later were fully affected. The first half of the policy change was phased in from the 1938 to 1943 birth cohorts while the second was phased in from the 1955 to 1960 birth cohorts. In each year of the phase-in, the full retirement age was increased in two-month increments and the fraction of full benefits that individuals could receive at the early retirement age of 62 fell by 0.833 percentage points. This latter change implied that the penalty for claiming at 62 increased from 20 to 30% of full benefits.While the generosity of retired worker benefits declined as a result of the Amendments, no corresponding changes were made to SSDI benefits. Theoretically, it is plausible that some individuals who would have otherwise claimed retired worker benefits responded to this change by applying for and perhaps ultimately receiving SSDI benefits. All else equal, one would expect the incentive to do this to be significantly greater for those born in more recent years and for those closer to the age of claiming retired worker benefits. This is because year-of-birth and age are the key determinants of the decline in the value of retired worker benefits induced by the policy.2 As Fig. 2 demonstrates, the decline at each age was three times larger for those born in 1943 than for their counterparts born in 1939. Similarly, the decline was almost twice as large in dollar terms for 62-year olds as it was for 45-year olds ($8900 versus $4700 for a man born in 1943).To estimate the effect of the policy on SSDI enrollment, we exploit variation by cohort3 and by age in the change in the present value of retired worker benefits. More specifically, we estimate first difference models that control for age-specific trends in SSDI enrollment and for common changes in each year in SSDI enrollment. Our key explanatory variable is the change in the present value of retired worker benefits from one year to the next at a certain age. We focus primarily on estimating the effect of the first half of the policy described above, which was phased in from the 1938 to the 1943 birth cohorts, as those affected by the second half were relatively young and thus less likely to be affected in our most recent year of data. We utilize aggregate data on SSDI enrollment rates by age, gender, and year-of-birth in each year from 1983 to 2005 and restrict attention to individuals between the ages of 45 and 64. We essentially test whether SSDI enrollment increases more rapidly at each age when the present value of retired worker benefits at that age is declining. If the Amendments did affect SSDI enrollment through the mechanism described above, then one would expect SSDI enrollment rates at a certain age to increase more rapidly when cohorts born between 1938 and 1943 reach that age. Using data for the 1934 through 1946 cohorts, our estimates strongly suggest that the decline in the generosity of Social Security retired worker benefits led to a significant increase in SSDI enrollment among both women and men. For each $5000 decline in the average present value of OA benefits, we estimate that SSDI enrollment increased by 0.6 percentage points, with the estimated effects approximately twice as large for women as for men (0.8 versus 0.4 percentage points). We obtain similar estimates if we restrict attention to those between the ages of 45 and 54 or between the ages of 55 and 64, though because the change in the present value increases with age, the effect on SSDI enrollment does as well. We also obtain similar estimates when we expand our analysis sample to consider individuals born between 1920 and 1960, with these estimates incorporating the effect of the second phase of the policy change described above. In the final section of our paper, we calculate how much of the increase in SSDI enrollment from 1983 to 2005 can be explained by the reduction in the generosity of retired worker benefits. Our point estimates suggest that SSDI enrollment was 0.58 percentage points higher among men between the ages of 45 and 64 and 0.89 percentage points higher among women in this same age range in December of 2005 than it otherwise would have been. Given that the actual increases during this same period were 1.64 and 3.41 percentage points for men and women, respectively, our findings suggest that this policy change was an important contributor to the rise in SSDI enrollment. Our estimates further suggest that the effect on SSDI enrollment twenty years from now, when those who received the maximum reduction in retired worker benefits will have aged into their fifties and early sixties, will be almost twice as large than at present.

The primary goal of the 1983 Social Security Amendments was to increase the short and long-term fiscal health of the OASDI program. Perhaps the most significant change resulting from this legislation was a reduction in the generosity of Social Security retired worker benefits. No corresponding changes were made to disabled worker benefits. Our findings in this paper suggest that one important effect of this legislation was an increase in the number receiving SSDI benefits. More specifically, we find that the Amendments can explain more than one-third of the increase in SSDI enrollment among men since 1983 and more than one-fourth of the increase among women during this same period. Because the reductions in benefit generosity have not yet been fully phased in, the long-run effect on SSDI enrollment will be almost twice as large. These results suggest that any changes to Social Security retired worker benefits may have important spillover effects to the SSDI program. In the case considered here, part of the reduction in spending for Social Security retired worker benefits was offset by an increase in spending on disabled worker benefits. Recent proposals to reform Social Security, such as those presented by the President's Commission in 2001, have largely ignored the SSDI program. The findings presented in this paper suggest that policymakers may want to incorporate SSDI when considering how optimally to reform the U.S. Social Security program. In this paper we have explored just one response to the 1983 Social Security Amendments, though this legislation may have had other important effects as well. For example, reductions in the actuarial adjustment factors beyond the age of 62 may have changed individuals' optimal timing for claiming social security retired worker benefits. Similarly, by reducing the present value of Social Security retirement wealth, the legislation may have affected individuals' optimal labor supply and savings decisions. More work on the effect of this legislation, which represented one of the most important set of changes to Social Security since its inception more than seventy years ago, is clearly warranted.