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Retirement Age Expectations of Older Americans Between 2006 and 2010

This paper examines how the retirement strategies of older (age 50 or older) Americans have changed over the period of 2006-2010. The data used for this study come from the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study (HRS), sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and the most comprehensive national survey of older Americans. HRS asks individuals at what age they plan to stop working and what their chances are of working past ages 62 and 65. The survey retains a panel structure (where an individual is observed over several years), which makes it possible to study how these individuals’ plans to retire have changed over time. This study examines what percentage of the working population (age 50 or older) plans to retire at the traditional U.S. ages of retirement (62 and 65) and beyond. Then it examines how this expected retirement age has changed over the two-year periods of 2006-2008 and 2008-2010 and also the four-year period of 2006-2010. It also examines the trends in self-reported probability of working past ages 62 and 65 and how these probabilities have changed over the two-year periods of 2006-2008 and 2008-2010. Data from the HRS show a clear trend that workers age 50 or over are expecting to work longer, which is correlated with the financial crisis of 2007-2009. In 2006 (just before the recent recession), 11.2 percent expected to retire at age 70, and by 2010 (after it had officially ended) that had increased to 14.8 percent. Even at higher ages, the expected retirement has jumped: Just 1.7 percent of workers age 50 or over planned to retire at age 80 in 2006, which more than tripled to 5.2 percent in 2010. Expected retirement at ages 62 and 65 steadily declined over this four-year period. In 2008, during the recession, 22.4 percent of the workers age 50 or over said they plan to never retire. That declined to 16.3 percent in 2010 after the recession. Over the 2006-2010 period (before, during, and after the recession), another 14-18 percent of workers said they don’t know when they will retire. The PDF for the above title, published in the December 2011 issue of EBRI Notes, also contains the fulltext of another December 2011 EBRI Notes article abstracted on SSRN: “Variation in Public Opinion on the Future of Employment-Based Health Benefits: Findings From the 2011 Health Confidence Survey.”