Meet our writers

Win $1,000







News June 2012

Aid for Age

Boomer Retirement Running Contrary to Predictions

By Tait Trussell

The new study reports that 59 percent of the first boomers to turn 65 are at least partially retired, 45 percent are completely retired and 14 percent are retired, but are working part-time. Of those still working, 37 percent say they'll retire in the next year and on average plan to do so at least by the time they're 68.

Baby boomers are retiring in droves, a new study finds. This doesn’t make sense.

Widespread belief has held that boomers would continue to work past the customary retirement age of 65. Given the hit to retirement accounts and incomes during the recession, the accepted view was that seniors would have to stay at work longer. Add to this condition the appearance that the economy seems to be recovering, means there’s potential for those who want to or need to keep working can do so.

The new study reports that 59 percent of the first boomers to turn 65 are at least partially retired, 45 percent are completely retired and 14 percent are retired, but are working part-time. Of those still working, 37 percent say they'll retire in the next year and on average plan to do so at least by the time they're 68.

These surprising findings were made in a study by the Metlife Mature Market Institute, which studies such social and economic trends affecting seniors. Baby boomers are those born between 1964 and 1946. Half of those surveyed in the study acknowledged that they retired earlier than expected. In fact, half of them said this. The vast majority of the retirees — 85 percent — believed they were in good health. Four in ten, however, said that health reasons contributed to their decision to quit working. In 2011, the first of the 79 million American baby boomers reached age 65.

Nearly two-thirds of these retirees in the study said they began collecting Social Security checks at age 63. Almost all of these early retirees — some 96 percent — say they like being retired.

More than 60 percent of the 65-year-olds said they already collect Social Security benefits. On average, they began collecting Social Security at age 63. This defies the “conventional wisdom that people would choose to wait to receive benefits until a later age in order to receive a higher payout,” the study said.

Here's how it works if your full retirement age is 67, as is the case for younger boomers. If you start your retirement benefits at age 62, your monthly benefit amount is reduced by about 30 percent. The reduction for starting benefits at age:

63 is about 25 percent;
64 is about 20 percent;
65 is about 13.3 percent; and
66 is about 6.7 percent.

The average age of retirement for boomers born in 1946 is 59.7 for men and 57.2 for women. Some 24 percent of them have a parent still living. Some 83 percent of them are grandparents.

Of the 65-year-old boomers, 31 percent believe they were at their sharpest when they were in their 40s. Only 20 percent “say they are at their sharpest today,” the study said. Married were 71 percent; divorced 12 percent. Seven percent are single.

A recent Wall Street Journal article reported on how couples negotiate on the tough decision of when to retire. It described Patrick Hickey, 82, a software programmer who’s sick of the two-and- a-half-hour commute to work from their home in Palos Verdes Estates, California, on one side. On the other side is his 55-year-old wife, Deborah Ewing, an attorney who urges her husband to “stay on the job until the last kid is out of college.” She says, “I plan to work as long as I can.”

The article said 62 percent of couples don’t agree on their expected retirement dates. Forty-seven percent disagree on whether they will continue to work in retirement. And 33 percent don’t agree on lifestyle expectations — go to Florida or Maine, for example.

Another report on baby boomers — this one from the Gerontological Society of America — said that among the boomers the unmarried has grown by 50 percent since 1980. Data from the Census and the American Community Survey were used to arrive at this statistic. Unmarried boomers are disproportionately women, younger, and non-white.”

The report said, “They tend to have fewer economic resources and poorer health. Despite a higher rate of disability, single boomers are less likely to have health insurance.”

Never-married men, the report said, have “poorer economic circumstances, despite having relatively higher levels of education.” Overall 19 percent of unmarried boomers said they received food stamps, public assistance or supplemental security income.

The Gerontological Society of America has as its mission to study the aging and disseminate information among scientists, decision-makers, and the public.

 

Tait Trussell is an old guy and fourth-generation professional journalist who writes extensively about aging issues among a myriad of diverse topics.

Meet Tait