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Every intro class teaches about price ceilings, and I suspect that 99% of them use rent control laws as an example. Of course, the standard lesson from a supply-and-demand diagram is that price ceilings lead to a situation where the quantity demanded exceeds the quantity supplied, and so while the price of rent-controlled apartments is lower, good luck in finding a vacancy!
The slightly more sophisticated insight is what I call in my own intro textbook the problem of "many margins for action." (Of course, if you are teaching an intro econ class, I encourage you to take a look at my Principles of Economics textbook, a high quality and lower-cost alternative to the big publishers, available here.) Landlords who face rent control legislation can skimp on maintenance, or hunt for ways to force the renter to bear additional fees or costs. If a large number of landlords act in this way, the feeling of the neighborhood and property values for homes that are not rentals may be affected, too.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, has a rent control law in place from 1970 to 1994. It was ended by a statewide vote that barely squeaked out a 51%-49% majority--and ended despite the fact that Cambridge residents favored the continuation of the law by a 60%-40% majority. The law placed limits on rents for all rental properties in Cambridge built in 1969 or earlier. In "Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from the End of Rent Control in Cambridge, Massachusetts," David H. Autor, Christopher J. Palmer, and Parag A. Pathak look at what happened. (The paper is published as NBER Working Paper 18125. These working papers are not freely available on-line, but many in academia will have access through institutional memberships. Full disclosure: David Autor is editor of my own Journal of Economic Perspectives, and thus my boss.) Autor, Palmer, and Pathak have data on rents and prices in both controlled rental buildings, uncontrolled rental buildings, and owner-occupied housing. They can also make comparisons to neighboring suburbs that did not have rent controls in place. Here are a few of their more striking findings:
-- The rent-controlled buildings in Cambridge, Mass., typically had rents 25%-40% below the level of uncontrolled rental buildings nearby. However, the maintenance of rent-controlled building was often subpar, with a higher incidence of issues like holes in walls or floors, chipped or peeling paint, loose railings, and the like. More broadly, owners of rent-controlled properties had no incentive to do any major fix-ups or renovations, because they would be unable to recoup the costs.
-- Rent control laws are still easy to find, if not exactly widespread, in the United States. For example, "New York City’s system of rent regulation affects at least one million apartments, while cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and many towns in California and New Jersey have various forms of rent regulation."
-- Not surprisingly, the end of rent control in 1995 meant that prices of the buildings that had formerly been rent-controlled rose. "Our statistical analysis also indicates that rent controlled properties were valued at a discount of about 50 percent relative to never-controlled properties with comparable characteristics in the same neighborhoods during the rent control era, and that the assessed values of these properties increased by approximately 18 to 25 percent after rent control ended."
-- More surprising, it turns out that the end of rent control raised the value of all the non-controlled properties in Cambridge, too. Properties that were in a neighborhood with a higher percentage of rent-controlled properties increased in value by more than those in neighborhoods with a lower percentage of rent-controlled properties. Indeed, when rent control ended, the gains to owners of uncontrolled properties were greater in total than the gains to the owners of rent-controlled properties. "The economic magnitude of the effect of rent control removal on the value of Cambridge’s housing stock is $1.8 billion. We calculate that positive spillovers from decontrol added $1.0 billion to the value of the never-controlled housing stock in Cambridge, equal to 10 percent of its total value and one-sixth of its appreciation between 1994 and 2004. Notably, direct effects on decontrolled properties are smaller than the spillovers. We estimate that rent control removal raised the value of decontrolled properties by $770 million, which is 25 percent less than the spillover effect."
Taking all of this together, it seems to me like the way to think about rent control--at least in the form that it was enacted in Cambridge, Mass.-- is that it creates a situation of low-quality and poorly-maintained housing stock, which then rents for less than uncontrolled properties. If the goal of public policy is to create lower-quality and more affordable housing, there are other ways to accomplish that goal. For example, zoning laws could require that rental complexes include a mixture of regular and small-sized rental apartments, so that the small-sized (and thus "lower quality") apartments would rent for less. Or those with lower incomes could just receive housing vouchers.
But when rent control is enacted in a way that leads to degradation of a substantial portion of the housing stock, the costs are not just carried by landlords of those rent-controlled apartments. In fact, a majority of the costs may be as a result of spillover effects to real estate that isn't rent-controlled. When a substantial proportion of the houses in a neighborhood are not well-maintained, everyone's housing prices will suffer.
5 Kasım 2012 Pazartesi
Can the Cure for Cancer Be Securitized?
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The October 2012 issue of Nature Biotechnology offers several articles on the theme of "Commercializing biomedical innovations." The opening "Editorial" sets the stage this way: "Investment in biomedical innovation is not what it once was. Millions of dollars have fled the life sciences risk capital pool. The number of early venture deals in biotech is smaller than ever. Public markets are all but closed, biotech-pharma deals increasingly back-loaded with contingent,
rather than upfront, payments. Paths to market are more winding and stonier. Government cuts are closing laboratories and culling blue-sky research. Never has there been a more pressing need to look beyond the existing pools of funding and talent to galvanize biomedical innovation."
Thus, the papers look at a variety of interactions: interactions between universities and the biomed industry; different business models for biomed firms; how venture capital firms often seem to enter biomed start-ups "too early," well before a commercial payoff can be expected; funding research through nonprofit foundations that promote free dissemination of any findings; and others. But my eye was particularly caught by a proposal by caught by three economists, Jose-Maria Fernandez, Roger M. Stein and Andrew W. Lo, who offer a proposal for "Commercializing biomedical research through securitization techniques."
These authors point out a paradoxical situation in biomedical research. On one side, the research journals and even the news media are full of breakthrough developments, "including gene therapies for previously incurable rare diseases, molecularly targeted oncology drugs, new modes of medical imaging and radiosurgery, biomarkers for drug response or for such diseases as prostate cancer and heart disease, and the use of human genome sequencing to find treatments for diseases that have confounded conventional medicine, not to mention advances in bioinformatics and computing power that have enabled many of these applications."
On the other side, the existing business structures for translating these developments into new products doesn't seem to be working well. "Consensus is growing that the bench-to-bedside process of translating biomedical research into effective therapeutics is broken. ... The productivity of big pharmaceutical companies—as measured by the number of new molecular entity and biologic license applications per dollar of R&D investment—has declined in recent years ... Life sciences venture-capital investments have not fared much better, with an average internal rate of return of −1% over the 10-year period from 2001 through 2010 ..."
Fernandez, Stein, and Lo suggest that the fundamental problem is that the technological breakthroughs present a vast array of possibilities, but these possibilities are complex and costly to pursue. A large portfolio of new biomed innovations is probably, overall, a money-maker. But when firms need to think about pursuing just a few of the many possibilities, at great cost, they may often decide not to do so. They write:
"The traditional quarterly earnings cycle, real-time pricing and dispersed ownership of public equities imply constant scrutiny of corporate performance from many different types of shareholders, all pushing senior management toward projects and strategies with clearer and more immediate payoffs, and away from more speculative but potentially transformative science and translational research. ... Industry professionals cite the existence of a ‘valley of death’—a funding gap between basic biomedical research and clinical development. For example, in 2010, only $6–7 billion was spent on translational efforts, whereas $48 billion was spent on basic research and $127 billion was spent on clinical development that same year."
What's their alternative? " We propose an alternative for funding biomedical innovation that addresses these issues through the use of ‘financial engineering’... Our approach involves two components: (i) creating large diversified portfolios—‘megafunds’ on the order of $5–30 billion—of biomedical projects at all stages of development; and (ii) structuring the financing for these portfolios as combinations of equity and securitized debt so as to access much larger sources of investment capital. These two components are inextricably intertwined: diversification within a single entity reduces risk to such an extent that the entity can raise assets by issuing both debt and equity, and the much larger capacity of debt markets makes this diversification possible for multi-billion-dollar portfolios of many expensive and highly risky projects. ... In a simulation using historical data for new molecular entities in oncology from 1990 to 2011, we find that megafunds of $5–15 billion may yield average investment returns of 8.9–11.4% for equity holders and 5–8% for ‘research-backed obligation’ holders, which are lower than typical venture-capital hurdle rates but attractive to pension funds, insurance companies and other large institutional investors.
Frankly, I have no clear idea about whether the Fernandez, Stein, and Lo approach raising money for biomed companies is viable. One never knows in advance whether an innovation will function well and fulfill real-world needs, whether that innovation is financial or real. But if the markets can put together this sort of deal, it might offer an enormous boost to the process of translating biomedical innovation into actual health care products. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the words "financial innovation" are often spoken with a heavy dose of sarcasm, as if all we need for a 21st-century economy is good old passbook savings accounts. But financial innovation like this Fernandez, Stein and Lo proposal is an example of how financial innovation might save lives by addressing an important real-world problem. This financial innovation seems well worth someone trying it out--with the proviso that if it doesn't work, no one gets bailed out!
rather than upfront, payments. Paths to market are more winding and stonier. Government cuts are closing laboratories and culling blue-sky research. Never has there been a more pressing need to look beyond the existing pools of funding and talent to galvanize biomedical innovation."
Thus, the papers look at a variety of interactions: interactions between universities and the biomed industry; different business models for biomed firms; how venture capital firms often seem to enter biomed start-ups "too early," well before a commercial payoff can be expected; funding research through nonprofit foundations that promote free dissemination of any findings; and others. But my eye was particularly caught by a proposal by caught by three economists, Jose-Maria Fernandez, Roger M. Stein and Andrew W. Lo, who offer a proposal for "Commercializing biomedical research through securitization techniques."
These authors point out a paradoxical situation in biomedical research. On one side, the research journals and even the news media are full of breakthrough developments, "including gene therapies for previously incurable rare diseases, molecularly targeted oncology drugs, new modes of medical imaging and radiosurgery, biomarkers for drug response or for such diseases as prostate cancer and heart disease, and the use of human genome sequencing to find treatments for diseases that have confounded conventional medicine, not to mention advances in bioinformatics and computing power that have enabled many of these applications."
On the other side, the existing business structures for translating these developments into new products doesn't seem to be working well. "Consensus is growing that the bench-to-bedside process of translating biomedical research into effective therapeutics is broken. ... The productivity of big pharmaceutical companies—as measured by the number of new molecular entity and biologic license applications per dollar of R&D investment—has declined in recent years ... Life sciences venture-capital investments have not fared much better, with an average internal rate of return of −1% over the 10-year period from 2001 through 2010 ..."
Fernandez, Stein, and Lo suggest that the fundamental problem is that the technological breakthroughs present a vast array of possibilities, but these possibilities are complex and costly to pursue. A large portfolio of new biomed innovations is probably, overall, a money-maker. But when firms need to think about pursuing just a few of the many possibilities, at great cost, they may often decide not to do so. They write:
"The traditional quarterly earnings cycle, real-time pricing and dispersed ownership of public equities imply constant scrutiny of corporate performance from many different types of shareholders, all pushing senior management toward projects and strategies with clearer and more immediate payoffs, and away from more speculative but potentially transformative science and translational research. ... Industry professionals cite the existence of a ‘valley of death’—a funding gap between basic biomedical research and clinical development. For example, in 2010, only $6–7 billion was spent on translational efforts, whereas $48 billion was spent on basic research and $127 billion was spent on clinical development that same year."
What's their alternative? " We propose an alternative for funding biomedical innovation that addresses these issues through the use of ‘financial engineering’... Our approach involves two components: (i) creating large diversified portfolios—‘megafunds’ on the order of $5–30 billion—of biomedical projects at all stages of development; and (ii) structuring the financing for these portfolios as combinations of equity and securitized debt so as to access much larger sources of investment capital. These two components are inextricably intertwined: diversification within a single entity reduces risk to such an extent that the entity can raise assets by issuing both debt and equity, and the much larger capacity of debt markets makes this diversification possible for multi-billion-dollar portfolios of many expensive and highly risky projects. ... In a simulation using historical data for new molecular entities in oncology from 1990 to 2011, we find that megafunds of $5–15 billion may yield average investment returns of 8.9–11.4% for equity holders and 5–8% for ‘research-backed obligation’ holders, which are lower than typical venture-capital hurdle rates but attractive to pension funds, insurance companies and other large institutional investors.
Frankly, I have no clear idea about whether the Fernandez, Stein, and Lo approach raising money for biomed companies is viable. One never knows in advance whether an innovation will function well and fulfill real-world needs, whether that innovation is financial or real. But if the markets can put together this sort of deal, it might offer an enormous boost to the process of translating biomedical innovation into actual health care products. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the words "financial innovation" are often spoken with a heavy dose of sarcasm, as if all we need for a 21st-century economy is good old passbook savings accounts. But financial innovation like this Fernandez, Stein and Lo proposal is an example of how financial innovation might save lives by addressing an important real-world problem. This financial innovation seems well worth someone trying it out--with the proviso that if it doesn't work, no one gets bailed out!
Would Inflation Help Cut Government Debt?
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When teaching about the effects of an unexpected surge of inflation, I always point out that those who borrowed at a fixed rate of interest benefit from the inflation, because they can repay their borrowing in inflated (and less valuable) dollars. And sometimes I toss in the mock-cheerful reminder that the U.S. government is the single biggest borrower--and thus presumably has a vested interest in a higher rate of inflation. But presuming an easy connection from higher inflation to reduced government debt burdens is actually a more problematic policy than it may at first appear.
Menzie Chinn and Jeffry Frieden make a lucid case for how higher inflation could ease the way to a lower real debt burden in an essay in the Milken Institute Review (available on-line with free registration). They point out that after World War II the U.S. government had accumulated a total debt of more than 100% of GDP, but that it cut that debt/GDP burden in half in about 10 years with a combination of economic growth and about 4% inflation. They are at pains to point out that they aren't suggesting a lot of inflation. But as they see it, given the fact that debt/GDP ratios are extremely high by historical standards in the U.S. and in a number of other high-income countries, a quiet process of slowing inflating away some of the real value of the debt is far preferable to the messy process of governments threatening to default. They write:
"Creditors, of course, receive less in real terms than they had contracted for – and probably less than they expected when they agreed to the contract. That may seem unfair. But the outcome is little different than what happens to creditors when they are forced to accept the restructuring of their claims through one form of bankruptcy or another. ...It’s important to remember, though, that
we are not suggesting a lot of inflation – certainly nothing like the double-digit rates that
followed the second oil shock in 1979 to 1981. Rather, we believe the goal should be to target
moderate inflation, only enough to reduce the debt burden to more manageable levels,
and adjust monetary policy accordingly. This probably means something in the 4 to 6 percent
range for several years. ... We’re not claiming that inflation is a painless way to speed deleveraging. We are claiming, though, that it is less painful than the realistic alternatives. ... Unusual times call for unusual measures."
The counterargument, which holds that inflation may not do much to reduce debt/GDP ratios, starts from this insight: Yes, inflation reduces the outstanding value of past debt, and in a situation like the aftermath of World War II when large debts were incurred, but the borrowing then stops. For example, the U.S. government ran budget surpluses four out of the five years from 1947-1951. But if fiscal policy is on an unsustainable path of overly large deficits, then inflation isn't going to fix the problem. In an essay appearing in the Annual Report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, "Unsustainable Fiscal Policy:Implications for Monetary Policy," Renee Haltom and John A. Weinberg make an argument that inflation would not actually offer much hope of reducing the current U.S government debt burden.
In short, if federal deficits are first definitively placed on a diminishing path, then a quiet surge of unexpected inflation could help in reducing the past debts. But on the current U.S. trajectory of a steadily-rising debt/GDP ratio over the next few decades, inflation isn't the answer--and could end up just being another part of the problem.
Menzie Chinn and Jeffry Frieden make a lucid case for how higher inflation could ease the way to a lower real debt burden in an essay in the Milken Institute Review (available on-line with free registration). They point out that after World War II the U.S. government had accumulated a total debt of more than 100% of GDP, but that it cut that debt/GDP burden in half in about 10 years with a combination of economic growth and about 4% inflation. They are at pains to point out that they aren't suggesting a lot of inflation. But as they see it, given the fact that debt/GDP ratios are extremely high by historical standards in the U.S. and in a number of other high-income countries, a quiet process of slowing inflating away some of the real value of the debt is far preferable to the messy process of governments threatening to default. They write:
"Creditors, of course, receive less in real terms than they had contracted for – and probably less than they expected when they agreed to the contract. That may seem unfair. But the outcome is little different than what happens to creditors when they are forced to accept the restructuring of their claims through one form of bankruptcy or another. ...It’s important to remember, though, that
we are not suggesting a lot of inflation – certainly nothing like the double-digit rates that
followed the second oil shock in 1979 to 1981. Rather, we believe the goal should be to target
moderate inflation, only enough to reduce the debt burden to more manageable levels,
and adjust monetary policy accordingly. This probably means something in the 4 to 6 percent
range for several years. ... We’re not claiming that inflation is a painless way to speed deleveraging. We are claiming, though, that it is less painful than the realistic alternatives. ... Unusual times call for unusual measures."
The counterargument, which holds that inflation may not do much to reduce debt/GDP ratios, starts from this insight: Yes, inflation reduces the outstanding value of past debt, and in a situation like the aftermath of World War II when large debts were incurred, but the borrowing then stops. For example, the U.S. government ran budget surpluses four out of the five years from 1947-1951. But if fiscal policy is on an unsustainable path of overly large deficits, then inflation isn't going to fix the problem. In an essay appearing in the Annual Report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, "Unsustainable Fiscal Policy:Implications for Monetary Policy," Renee Haltom and John A. Weinberg make an argument that inflation would not actually offer much hope of reducing the current U.S government debt burden.
"It is useful to consider how much inflation would be required to adequately reduce current debt levels. ... To consider how much inflation would be required today to address current debt imbalances, Michael Krause and Stéphane Moyen (2011) estimate that a moderate rise in inflation to 4 percent annually sustained for at least 10 years—in effect a permanent doubling of the Fed’s inflation objective—would reduce the value of the additional debt that accrued during the 2008–09 financial crisis, not the total debt, by just 25 percent. If the rise in inflation lasted only two or three years, a 16 percentage point increase—from roughly 2 percent inflation today to 18 percent—would be required to reduce that additional debt by just 3 percent to 8 percent. Such inflation rates were not reached even in the worst days of the inflationary 1970s. The reason inflation has such a minimal impact on debt in Krause and Moyen’s estimates is that while inflation erodes the value of existing nominal debt, it increases the financing costs for newly issued debt because investors must be compensated to be willing to hold bonds that will be subject to higher inflation. This effect would be greater for governments such as the United States that have a short average maturity of government debt and therefore need to reissue it often.In a similar spirit, the IMF wrote in Chapter 3 of its most recent World Economic Outlook that inflation at low levels often seems to have little effect in reducing government debt: "The relationship between inflation and [government] debt reduction is more ambiguous. Although hyperinflation is clearly associated with sharp debt reduction, when hyperinflation episodes are excluded, there is no clear association between the average inflation rate and the change in debt."
"With these estimates in mind, it is worth recalling the CBO’s projection that debt held by the public may triple as a percent of GDP within 25 years. The estimates cited above suggest that inflation is simply not a viable strategy for reducing such debt levels. In addition, it is important to remember that inflation is costly on many levels. Inflation high enough to significantly erode the debt would inflict considerable damage on the economy and would require costly policies for the Fed to regain its credibility after the fact. Inflation that was engineered specifically to erode debt would provide a significant source of fiscal revenue without approval via the democratic process, and so would
raise questions about the role of the central bank as opposed to the roles of Congress and the executive branch in raising fiscal revenues. Ultimately, the solution to high debt levels must come from fiscal authorities."
In short, if federal deficits are first definitively placed on a diminishing path, then a quiet surge of unexpected inflation could help in reducing the past debts. But on the current U.S. trajectory of a steadily-rising debt/GDP ratio over the next few decades, inflation isn't the answer--and could end up just being another part of the problem.
How Retirement Age Tracks Social Security's Rules
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Back in 1983, as one of the steps taken to bolster the long-run finances of the Social Security System, was to phase in a rise in the "normal" or "full" retirement age. The normal retirement age for receiving full Social Security benefits had been 65, with "early retirement" with lower benefits possible at age 62. Under the new rules, the normal retirement age remained 65 for those born in 1937 or earlier--and thus turning 65 before 2002. It then phased up by 2 months per year, so that for those born six years later in 1943 or after, the normal retirement age is now 66. Written into law is a follow-up increase where a rise in the normal retirement age from 66 to 67 will be phased in, again at a rate of two months per year, for those born from 1955 to 1960.
How has this change altered actual retirement patterns? What are the reasons, either for retirees or for the finances of Social Security, to encourage still-later retirement?
Economists have long recognized that what a government designates as the "normal" retirement age has a big effect on when people actually choose to retire. Luc Behaghel and David M. Blau present some of the recent evidence in "Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses
to Changes in the Full Retirement Age," which appears in the November 2012 American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (4(4): 41–67). (The journal isn't freely available on-line, but many in academia will have access through a library subscription.)
Consider the following graphs from Behaghel and Blau. Each one is for those born in a different year, from 1937 up through 1942, as the normal retirement age phased up. These people are the ones hitting the normal retirement age of 65 in the early and mid-2000s. The solid line shows the probability of retirement at each age. The early retirement age of 62 is marked with a vertical red line; the previous normal retirement age of 65 is marked with a vertical red line; and the actual retirement age for that year as it phases up two months per year is marked with a vertical red line. The dashed line, which is the same in all the figures, shows for comparison the retirement pattern for those born over the 1931-1936 period.
The main striking pattern is that the probability of retiring at a certain age almost exactly tracks the changes in the normal retirement age: that is, the solid line spikes at the red vertical line showing the normal retirement age. There is also a spike at the early retirement age of 62. Here are the patterns.
The evidence here seems clear: People are making their retirement choices in synch with the government-set normal retirement age. This pattern isn't new, as the authors point out, a spike in retirement age at 65 became visible in the data back in the early 1940s, about five years after Social Security became law. Still, the obvious question (for an economist) is why people would make this choice. If you retire later than the normal retirement age, your monthly benefits are scaled up, so from the viewpoint of overall expected lifetime payments, you don't gain from retiring earlier. A number of possible explanations have been proposed: 1) people don't have other sources of income and need to take the retirement benefits as soon as possible for current income; 2) people are myopic, or don't recognize that their monthly benefits would be higher if they delayed retirement; 3) many people are waiting until age 65 to retire so that they can move from their employer health insurance to Medicare; 4) some company retirement plans encourage retiring at age 65.
However, none of these explanations give an obvious reason for why the retirement age would exactly track the changes in Social Security normal retirement age, so it seems as if a final "behavioral" explanation is that the "normal" retirement age announced by the government, whatever it is, is then treated by many people as a recommendation that should be taken. Choosing a retirement date in this way is probably suboptimal both for individuals and for the finances of the Social Security system.
From the standpoint of individuals, there's a widespread sense among economists that many retirees would benefit from having more of their wealth in annuities--that is, an amount that would pay out no matter how long they live. In the Fall 2011 issue of my own Journal of Economic Perspectives,
Shlomo Benartzi, Alessandro Previtero, and Richard H. Thaler have an article on "Annuitization Puzzles," which makes the point that when you delay receiving Social Security, you are in effect buying an annuity: that is, you are taking less in the present--which is similar to "paying" for the annuity-- in exchange for a larger long-term payment in the future. They write: "[T]he easiest way to increase the amount of annuity income that families have is to delay the age at which people start claiming Social Security benefits. Participants are first eligible to start claiming benefits at age 62, but by waiting to begin, the monthly payments increase in an actuarially fair manner until age 70. "
They further argue that a good starting point to encouraging such behavior would be to re-frame the way in which the Social Security Administration, and all the rest of us, talk about Social Security benefits. Imagine that, with no change at all in the current law, we all started talking about a "standard retirement age" of 70. We pointed out that you can retire earlier, but if you do, monthly benefits will be lower. If the choice of when to retire was framed in this way, my strong suspicion is that many more people would react differently than when we announce that the "normal retirement age" is 66, and if you wait then your monthly benefits will be higher. Again, people seem to react to what the government designates as the target for retirement age.
However, this labeling change might encourage people to work longer, but it would not affect the solvency of the Social Security system, because those who wait longer to retire are, in effect, paying for their own higher monthly benefits by delaying the receipt of those benefits. However, the Social Security actuaries offer a number of illustrative calculations on their website about possible steps to bolster the financing of the system. One proposal about phasing back the normal age of retirement looks like this: "After the normal retirement age (NRA) reaches 67 for those age 62 in 2022, increase the NRA 2 months per year until it reaches 69 for individuals attaining age 62 in 2034. Thereafter, increase the NRA 1 month every 2 years."
Thus, this proposal would represent no change in the rules for Social Security benefits for anyone born before 1960--and thus in their early 50s at present. Under this proposal, those born after 1960 would face the gradual phase-in--but of course, they would also benefit from having a program that is much closer to fully funded. would face the same phase-in as currently exists. The actuaries estimate that this step by itself would address about 44% of the gap over the next 75 years between what Social Security has promised and the funding that is expected during that time. Given the predicted shortfalls of the Social Security system in the future, and the gains in life expectancy both in the last few decades and expected in the next few decades, and the parlous condition of large budget deficits reaching into the future, I would be open to proposals to phase in a more rapid and more sustained rise in the normal retirement age for Social Security benefits.
How has this change altered actual retirement patterns? What are the reasons, either for retirees or for the finances of Social Security, to encourage still-later retirement?
Economists have long recognized that what a government designates as the "normal" retirement age has a big effect on when people actually choose to retire. Luc Behaghel and David M. Blau present some of the recent evidence in "Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses
to Changes in the Full Retirement Age," which appears in the November 2012 American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (4(4): 41–67). (The journal isn't freely available on-line, but many in academia will have access through a library subscription.)
Consider the following graphs from Behaghel and Blau. Each one is for those born in a different year, from 1937 up through 1942, as the normal retirement age phased up. These people are the ones hitting the normal retirement age of 65 in the early and mid-2000s. The solid line shows the probability of retirement at each age. The early retirement age of 62 is marked with a vertical red line; the previous normal retirement age of 65 is marked with a vertical red line; and the actual retirement age for that year as it phases up two months per year is marked with a vertical red line. The dashed line, which is the same in all the figures, shows for comparison the retirement pattern for those born over the 1931-1936 period.
The main striking pattern is that the probability of retiring at a certain age almost exactly tracks the changes in the normal retirement age: that is, the solid line spikes at the red vertical line showing the normal retirement age. There is also a spike at the early retirement age of 62. Here are the patterns.
The evidence here seems clear: People are making their retirement choices in synch with the government-set normal retirement age. This pattern isn't new, as the authors point out, a spike in retirement age at 65 became visible in the data back in the early 1940s, about five years after Social Security became law. Still, the obvious question (for an economist) is why people would make this choice. If you retire later than the normal retirement age, your monthly benefits are scaled up, so from the viewpoint of overall expected lifetime payments, you don't gain from retiring earlier. A number of possible explanations have been proposed: 1) people don't have other sources of income and need to take the retirement benefits as soon as possible for current income; 2) people are myopic, or don't recognize that their monthly benefits would be higher if they delayed retirement; 3) many people are waiting until age 65 to retire so that they can move from their employer health insurance to Medicare; 4) some company retirement plans encourage retiring at age 65.
However, none of these explanations give an obvious reason for why the retirement age would exactly track the changes in Social Security normal retirement age, so it seems as if a final "behavioral" explanation is that the "normal" retirement age announced by the government, whatever it is, is then treated by many people as a recommendation that should be taken. Choosing a retirement date in this way is probably suboptimal both for individuals and for the finances of the Social Security system.
From the standpoint of individuals, there's a widespread sense among economists that many retirees would benefit from having more of their wealth in annuities--that is, an amount that would pay out no matter how long they live. In the Fall 2011 issue of my own Journal of Economic Perspectives,
Shlomo Benartzi, Alessandro Previtero, and Richard H. Thaler have an article on "Annuitization Puzzles," which makes the point that when you delay receiving Social Security, you are in effect buying an annuity: that is, you are taking less in the present--which is similar to "paying" for the annuity-- in exchange for a larger long-term payment in the future. They write: "[T]he easiest way to increase the amount of annuity income that families have is to delay the age at which people start claiming Social Security benefits. Participants are first eligible to start claiming benefits at age 62, but by waiting to begin, the monthly payments increase in an actuarially fair manner until age 70. "
They further argue that a good starting point to encouraging such behavior would be to re-frame the way in which the Social Security Administration, and all the rest of us, talk about Social Security benefits. Imagine that, with no change at all in the current law, we all started talking about a "standard retirement age" of 70. We pointed out that you can retire earlier, but if you do, monthly benefits will be lower. If the choice of when to retire was framed in this way, my strong suspicion is that many more people would react differently than when we announce that the "normal retirement age" is 66, and if you wait then your monthly benefits will be higher. Again, people seem to react to what the government designates as the target for retirement age.
However, this labeling change might encourage people to work longer, but it would not affect the solvency of the Social Security system, because those who wait longer to retire are, in effect, paying for their own higher monthly benefits by delaying the receipt of those benefits. However, the Social Security actuaries offer a number of illustrative calculations on their website about possible steps to bolster the financing of the system. One proposal about phasing back the normal age of retirement looks like this: "After the normal retirement age (NRA) reaches 67 for those age 62 in 2022, increase the NRA 2 months per year until it reaches 69 for individuals attaining age 62 in 2034. Thereafter, increase the NRA 1 month every 2 years."
Thus, this proposal would represent no change in the rules for Social Security benefits for anyone born before 1960--and thus in their early 50s at present. Under this proposal, those born after 1960 would face the gradual phase-in--but of course, they would also benefit from having a program that is much closer to fully funded. would face the same phase-in as currently exists. The actuaries estimate that this step by itself would address about 44% of the gap over the next 75 years between what Social Security has promised and the funding that is expected during that time. Given the predicted shortfalls of the Social Security system in the future, and the gains in life expectancy both in the last few decades and expected in the next few decades, and the parlous condition of large budget deficits reaching into the future, I would be open to proposals to phase in a more rapid and more sustained rise in the normal retirement age for Social Security benefits.
Minimum Wage to $9.50? $9.80? $10?
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During the 2008 campaign, President Obama promised to raise the minimum wage to $9.50/hour by 2011. This pledge was made at a time when the economic slowdown was already underway: the recession started in December 2007. The pledge was also made at a time when an increase in the minimum wage was already underway: in May 2007, President Bush has signed into law an increase in the minimum wage, to rise in several stages from $5.15 to $7.25 in July 2009.
Last summer, some Democratic Congressmen tried to push the issue a bit. In June, 17 House Democrats signed on as co-sponsors of a bill authored by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois for an immediate rise in the minimum wage to $10/hour--and then to index it to inflation in the future. In July, over 100 Democrats in the House of Representatives signed on as co-sponsors of a bill authored by Rep. George Miller of California to raise the federal minimum wage to $9.80/hour over the next three years--and then to index it to inflation after that point. But while raising the minimum wage was a hot issue in the years before Bush signed the most recent increases into law, these calls for a still-higher minimum wage got little attention.
For background, here are a couple of graphs about the U.S. minimum wage. The first graph shows the nominal minimum wage over time, and also the real minimum wage adjusted to 2011 dollars. In real terms, the increase in the minimum wage from 2007 to 2009 didn't quite get it back to the peak levels of the late 1960s, but did return it to the levels of the early 1960s and most of the 1970s--as well as above the levels that prevailed during much of the 1980s and 1990s. The second graph shows the minimum wage as a share of the median wage for several countries, using OECD data. The U.S. has the lowest ratio of minimum wage/median wage--and given the greater inequality of the U.S. income distribution, the U.S. ratio would look lower still if compared to average wages. However, because of the rise from 2007-2009, the U.S. economy has experienced the largest rise in the minimum wage from 2006-2011. (Thanks to Danlu Hu for producing these graphs.)
So why didn't calls for a higher minimum wage in summer 2012 get more political traction?
1) The unemployment rate in May 2007 was 4.4%, and had been below 5% for 18 months. The unemployment rate last summer was around 8.2%, and had been above 8% for more than 40 months. Thus, there was a lot less reason in May 2007 to worry about the risk that a higher minimum wage might reduce the number of jobs for unskilled labor than their was in summer 2012.
2) In summer 2012, average wage increases had not been looking good for most workers for several years, which made raising the minimum wage seem less appealing as a matter of fairness.
3) The increase in the minimum wage that President Bush signed into law that took effect from 2007 to 2009 made it feel less urgent to raise the minimum wage still further.
4) Some states have set their own minimum wages, at a level above the U.S. minimum wage. The U.S. Department of Labor has a list of state minimum wage laws here: for example, California has a minimum wage of $8/hour and Illinois has a minimum wage of $8.25/hour. Thus, at least some of those jurisdictions who favor a higher minimum wage are getting to have it.
5) In summer 2012, the Democratic establishment was focused on re-electing President Obama, and since raising the minimum wage was not part of his active agenda, it gave no publicity or support to the calls for a higher minimum wage.
6) In the academic world, there was a knock-down, drag-out scrum about the minimum wage going through much of the 1990s. David Card and Alan Krueger published a much-cited paper in 1994 in the American Economic Review, comparing minimum wage workers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and found that the different minimum wages across states had no effect on employment levels. (“Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.”American Economic Review, September 1994, 84(4), pp. 772–93.). This conclusion was heavily disputed, and for those who want to get their hands dirty, the December 2000 issue of the American Economic Review had 30+ pages of critique of the Card-Krueger paper and 30+ pages of response. I won't seek to mediate that dispute here. But I think that the academics who were driving the arguments had sort of exhausted themselves by the time the 2007 legislation passed, and no one seemed to be slavering for a rematch.
I was lukewarm on the rise in the minimum wage that was enacted in 2007. It seems to me that there are better ways to help low-wage workers. But that said, if the minimum wage isn't very far above the market wage for unskilled labor (and in some places may even be below the market wage for unskilled labor), there's no reason to believe that it will have large effects on employment. However, raising the minimum wage further to the range of $9.50/hour or $10/hour would in many parts of the country push well above the prevailing wage for unskilled labor, especially in a still-weak economy, and so the effects on employment would be more deleterious.
I tried to explain some of the other policy issues raised by a higher minimum wage in my book The Instant Economist: Everything You Need to Know About How the Economy Works, published earlier this year by Penguin Plume.
Last summer, some Democratic Congressmen tried to push the issue a bit. In June, 17 House Democrats signed on as co-sponsors of a bill authored by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois for an immediate rise in the minimum wage to $10/hour--and then to index it to inflation in the future. In July, over 100 Democrats in the House of Representatives signed on as co-sponsors of a bill authored by Rep. George Miller of California to raise the federal minimum wage to $9.80/hour over the next three years--and then to index it to inflation after that point. But while raising the minimum wage was a hot issue in the years before Bush signed the most recent increases into law, these calls for a still-higher minimum wage got little attention.
For background, here are a couple of graphs about the U.S. minimum wage. The first graph shows the nominal minimum wage over time, and also the real minimum wage adjusted to 2011 dollars. In real terms, the increase in the minimum wage from 2007 to 2009 didn't quite get it back to the peak levels of the late 1960s, but did return it to the levels of the early 1960s and most of the 1970s--as well as above the levels that prevailed during much of the 1980s and 1990s. The second graph shows the minimum wage as a share of the median wage for several countries, using OECD data. The U.S. has the lowest ratio of minimum wage/median wage--and given the greater inequality of the U.S. income distribution, the U.S. ratio would look lower still if compared to average wages. However, because of the rise from 2007-2009, the U.S. economy has experienced the largest rise in the minimum wage from 2006-2011. (Thanks to Danlu Hu for producing these graphs.)
So why didn't calls for a higher minimum wage in summer 2012 get more political traction?
1) The unemployment rate in May 2007 was 4.4%, and had been below 5% for 18 months. The unemployment rate last summer was around 8.2%, and had been above 8% for more than 40 months. Thus, there was a lot less reason in May 2007 to worry about the risk that a higher minimum wage might reduce the number of jobs for unskilled labor than their was in summer 2012.
2) In summer 2012, average wage increases had not been looking good for most workers for several years, which made raising the minimum wage seem less appealing as a matter of fairness.
3) The increase in the minimum wage that President Bush signed into law that took effect from 2007 to 2009 made it feel less urgent to raise the minimum wage still further.
4) Some states have set their own minimum wages, at a level above the U.S. minimum wage. The U.S. Department of Labor has a list of state minimum wage laws here: for example, California has a minimum wage of $8/hour and Illinois has a minimum wage of $8.25/hour. Thus, at least some of those jurisdictions who favor a higher minimum wage are getting to have it.
5) In summer 2012, the Democratic establishment was focused on re-electing President Obama, and since raising the minimum wage was not part of his active agenda, it gave no publicity or support to the calls for a higher minimum wage.
6) In the academic world, there was a knock-down, drag-out scrum about the minimum wage going through much of the 1990s. David Card and Alan Krueger published a much-cited paper in 1994 in the American Economic Review, comparing minimum wage workers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and found that the different minimum wages across states had no effect on employment levels. (“Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.”American Economic Review, September 1994, 84(4), pp. 772–93.). This conclusion was heavily disputed, and for those who want to get their hands dirty, the December 2000 issue of the American Economic Review had 30+ pages of critique of the Card-Krueger paper and 30+ pages of response. I won't seek to mediate that dispute here. But I think that the academics who were driving the arguments had sort of exhausted themselves by the time the 2007 legislation passed, and no one seemed to be slavering for a rematch.
I was lukewarm on the rise in the minimum wage that was enacted in 2007. It seems to me that there are better ways to help low-wage workers. But that said, if the minimum wage isn't very far above the market wage for unskilled labor (and in some places may even be below the market wage for unskilled labor), there's no reason to believe that it will have large effects on employment. However, raising the minimum wage further to the range of $9.50/hour or $10/hour would in many parts of the country push well above the prevailing wage for unskilled labor, especially in a still-weak economy, and so the effects on employment would be more deleterious.
I tried to explain some of the other policy issues raised by a higher minimum wage in my book The Instant Economist: Everything You Need to Know About How the Economy Works, published earlier this year by Penguin Plume.
"Here’s an insight for opponents of a higher minimum wage tomull over: Let’s say a 20 percent rise in the minimum wage leads to 4 percentfewer jobs for low-skilled workers (as some of the evidence suggests). But thisalso implies that a higher minimum wage leads to a pay raise for 96 percent oflow-skilled workers. Many people in low-skill jobs don’t have full-time,year-round jobs. So perhaps these workers work 4 percent fewer hours in a year,but they get 20 percent higher pay for the hours they do work. In thisscenario, even if the minimum wage reduces the number of jobs or the number ofhours available, raising it could still make the vast majority of low-skilledworkers better off, as they’d work fewer hours at a higher wage.What I didn't point out in the book is the political dynamic that raising the minimum wage allows politicians to pretend that they are helping people at zero cost--because the costs don't appear as taxes and spending. But pushing up the minimum wage substantially now, after the recent increases and in a still-struggling economy, does not strike me as wise policy.
"There’s another side to the argument, however. Theshort-term costs to an individual of not being able to find a job are quitelarge, while the benefits of slightly higher wages are (relatively speaking)somewhat smaller, so the costs to the few who can’t find jobs because of ahigher minimum wage may be in some sense more severe than the smaller benefitsto individuals who are paid more. Those costs of higher unemployment are alsounlikely to be spread evenly across the economy; instead, they are likely to beconcentrated in communities that are already economically disadvantaged. Also,low-skill jobs are often entry-level jobs. If low-skill jobs become lessavailable, the bottom rung on the employment ladder becomes less available tolow-skilled workers. Thus, higher minimum wages might offer modest gains to thesubstantial number of low-skilled workers who get jobs, but impose substantialeconomic injury on those who can’t.
"There are alternatives to price floors, and economistsoften tend to favor such alternatives because they work with the forces ofsupply and demand. For example, if a government wants to boost wages forlow-skilled workers, it could invest in skills-training programs. This wouldenable some of those workers to move into more skills-driven (and better paying)positions and would lower the supply of low-skilled labor, driving up theirwages as well. The government could subsidize firms that hire low-skilledworkers, enabling the firms to pay them a higher wage. Or it could subsidizethe wages of low-skilled workers directly through programs such as the EarnedIncome Tax Credit, which provides a tax break to workers whose income is belowa certain threshold. This policy increases the workers’ net income withoutplacing any financial burden on the employers."
4 Kasım 2012 Pazar
Time Watching Television
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I recently ran across this historical data from the Neilson company for the time American households spend watching television, per day.
I rarely watch 8 hours of television per week, much less per day. I had a conversation the other day in which someone was incredulous that I have never seen an episode of Seinfeld, or Friends, or actually any sitcom in the last decade or so. I told them that I used to watch M*A*S*H now and then, and they looked at me with pity.
Economists sometimes quote the old proverb: "De gustibus non est disputandum." There's no arguing over taste. We tend to accept consumer tastes and preferences as given, and proceed from there. I suppose that those of us who blog, and then hope for readers, can't really complain about those who spend time looking at a screen. I certainly have my own personal time-wasters, like reading an inordinate number of mysteries. I assume that for many people the television is on in the background of other activities. But at some deep level, I just don't understand averaging 8 hours of television per day. I always remember the long-ago jibe from the old radio comedian Fred Allen: "Television is a medium because anything well done is rare."
Note: Thanks to Danlu Hu for downloading the data and creating this figure.
I rarely watch 8 hours of television per week, much less per day. I had a conversation the other day in which someone was incredulous that I have never seen an episode of Seinfeld, or Friends, or actually any sitcom in the last decade or so. I told them that I used to watch M*A*S*H now and then, and they looked at me with pity.
Economists sometimes quote the old proverb: "De gustibus non est disputandum." There's no arguing over taste. We tend to accept consumer tastes and preferences as given, and proceed from there. I suppose that those of us who blog, and then hope for readers, can't really complain about those who spend time looking at a screen. I certainly have my own personal time-wasters, like reading an inordinate number of mysteries. I assume that for many people the television is on in the background of other activities. But at some deep level, I just don't understand averaging 8 hours of television per day. I always remember the long-ago jibe from the old radio comedian Fred Allen: "Television is a medium because anything well done is rare."
Note: Thanks to Danlu Hu for downloading the data and creating this figure.
How Retirement Age Tracks Social Security's Rules
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Back in 1983, as one of the steps taken to bolster the long-run finances of the Social Security System, was to phase in a rise in the "normal" or "full" retirement age. The normal retirement age for receiving full Social Security benefits had been 65, with "early retirement" with lower benefits possible at age 62. Under the new rules, the normal retirement age remained 65 for those born in 1937 or earlier--and thus turning 65 before 2002. It then phased up by 2 months per year, so that for those born six years later in 1943 or after, the normal retirement age is now 66. Written into law is a follow-up increase where a rise in the normal retirement age from 66 to 67 will be phased in, again at a rate of two months per year, for those born from 1955 to 1960.
How has this change altered actual retirement patterns? What are the reasons, either for retirees or for the finances of Social Security, to encourage still-later retirement?
Economists have long recognized that what a government designates as the "normal" retirement age has a big effect on when people actually choose to retire. Luc Behaghel and David M. Blau present some of the recent evidence in "Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses
to Changes in the Full Retirement Age," which appears in the November 2012 American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (4(4): 41–67). (The journal isn't freely available on-line, but many in academia will have access through a library subscription.)
Consider the following graphs from Behaghel and Blau. Each one is for those born in a different year, from 1937 up through 1942, as the normal retirement age phased up. These people are the ones hitting the normal retirement age of 65 in the early and mid-2000s. The solid line shows the probability of retirement at each age. The early retirement age of 62 is marked with a vertical red line; the previous normal retirement age of 65 is marked with a vertical red line; and the actual retirement age for that year as it phases up two months per year is marked with a vertical red line. The dashed line, which is the same in all the figures, shows for comparison the retirement pattern for those born over the 1931-1936 period.
The main striking pattern is that the probability of retiring at a certain age almost exactly tracks the changes in the normal retirement age: that is, the solid line spikes at the red vertical line showing the normal retirement age. There is also a spike at the early retirement age of 62. Here are the patterns.
The evidence here seems clear: People are making their retirement choices in synch with the government-set normal retirement age. This pattern isn't new, as the authors point out, a spike in retirement age at 65 became visible in the data back in the early 1940s, about five years after Social Security became law. Still, the obvious question (for an economist) is why people would make this choice. If you retire later than the normal retirement age, your monthly benefits are scaled up, so from the viewpoint of overall expected lifetime payments, you don't gain from retiring earlier. A number of possible explanations have been proposed: 1) people don't have other sources of income and need to take the retirement benefits as soon as possible for current income; 2) people are myopic, or don't recognize that their monthly benefits would be higher if they delayed retirement; 3) many people are waiting until age 65 to retire so that they can move from their employer health insurance to Medicare; 4) some company retirement plans encourage retiring at age 65.
However, none of these explanations give an obvious reason for why the retirement age would exactly track the changes in Social Security normal retirement age, so it seems as if a final "behavioral" explanation is that the "normal" retirement age announced by the government, whatever it is, is then treated by many people as a recommendation that should be taken. Choosing a retirement date in this way is probably suboptimal both for individuals and for the finances of the Social Security system.
From the standpoint of individuals, there's a widespread sense among economists that many retirees would benefit from having more of their wealth in annuities--that is, an amount that would pay out no matter how long they live. In the Fall 2011 issue of my own Journal of Economic Perspectives,
Shlomo Benartzi, Alessandro Previtero, and Richard H. Thaler have an article on "Annuitization Puzzles," which makes the point that when you delay receiving Social Security, you are in effect buying an annuity: that is, you are taking less in the present--which is similar to "paying" for the annuity-- in exchange for a larger long-term payment in the future. They write: "[T]he easiest way to increase the amount of annuity income that families have is to delay the age at which people start claiming Social Security benefits. Participants are first eligible to start claiming benefits at age 62, but by waiting to begin, the monthly payments increase in an actuarially fair manner until age 70. "
They further argue that a good starting point to encouraging such behavior would be to re-frame the way in which the Social Security Administration, and all the rest of us, talk about Social Security benefits. Imagine that, with no change at all in the current law, we all started talking about a "standard retirement age" of 70. We pointed out that you can retire earlier, but if you do, monthly benefits will be lower. If the choice of when to retire was framed in this way, my strong suspicion is that many more people would react differently than when we announce that the "normal retirement age" is 66, and if you wait then your monthly benefits will be higher. Again, people seem to react to what the government designates as the target for retirement age.
However, this labeling change might encourage people to work longer, but it would not affect the solvency of the Social Security system, because those who wait longer to retire are, in effect, paying for their own higher monthly benefits by delaying the receipt of those benefits. However, the Social Security actuaries offer a number of illustrative calculations on their website about possible steps to bolster the financing of the system. One proposal about phasing back the normal age of retirement looks like this: "After the normal retirement age (NRA) reaches 67 for those age 62 in 2022, increase the NRA 2 months per year until it reaches 69 for individuals attaining age 62 in 2034. Thereafter, increase the NRA 1 month every 2 years."
Thus, this proposal would represent no change in the rules for Social Security benefits for anyone born before 1960--and thus in their early 50s at present. Under this proposal, those born after 1960 would face the gradual phase-in--but of course, they would also benefit from having a program that is much closer to fully funded. would face the same phase-in as currently exists. The actuaries estimate that this step by itself would address about 44% of the gap over the next 75 years between what Social Security has promised and the funding that is expected during that time. Given the predicted shortfalls of the Social Security system in the future, and the gains in life expectancy both in the last few decades and expected in the next few decades, and the parlous condition of large budget deficits reaching into the future, I would be open to proposals to phase in a more rapid and more sustained rise in the normal retirement age for Social Security benefits.
How has this change altered actual retirement patterns? What are the reasons, either for retirees or for the finances of Social Security, to encourage still-later retirement?
Economists have long recognized that what a government designates as the "normal" retirement age has a big effect on when people actually choose to retire. Luc Behaghel and David M. Blau present some of the recent evidence in "Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses
to Changes in the Full Retirement Age," which appears in the November 2012 American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (4(4): 41–67). (The journal isn't freely available on-line, but many in academia will have access through a library subscription.)
Consider the following graphs from Behaghel and Blau. Each one is for those born in a different year, from 1937 up through 1942, as the normal retirement age phased up. These people are the ones hitting the normal retirement age of 65 in the early and mid-2000s. The solid line shows the probability of retirement at each age. The early retirement age of 62 is marked with a vertical red line; the previous normal retirement age of 65 is marked with a vertical red line; and the actual retirement age for that year as it phases up two months per year is marked with a vertical red line. The dashed line, which is the same in all the figures, shows for comparison the retirement pattern for those born over the 1931-1936 period.
The main striking pattern is that the probability of retiring at a certain age almost exactly tracks the changes in the normal retirement age: that is, the solid line spikes at the red vertical line showing the normal retirement age. There is also a spike at the early retirement age of 62. Here are the patterns.
The evidence here seems clear: People are making their retirement choices in synch with the government-set normal retirement age. This pattern isn't new, as the authors point out, a spike in retirement age at 65 became visible in the data back in the early 1940s, about five years after Social Security became law. Still, the obvious question (for an economist) is why people would make this choice. If you retire later than the normal retirement age, your monthly benefits are scaled up, so from the viewpoint of overall expected lifetime payments, you don't gain from retiring earlier. A number of possible explanations have been proposed: 1) people don't have other sources of income and need to take the retirement benefits as soon as possible for current income; 2) people are myopic, or don't recognize that their monthly benefits would be higher if they delayed retirement; 3) many people are waiting until age 65 to retire so that they can move from their employer health insurance to Medicare; 4) some company retirement plans encourage retiring at age 65.
However, none of these explanations give an obvious reason for why the retirement age would exactly track the changes in Social Security normal retirement age, so it seems as if a final "behavioral" explanation is that the "normal" retirement age announced by the government, whatever it is, is then treated by many people as a recommendation that should be taken. Choosing a retirement date in this way is probably suboptimal both for individuals and for the finances of the Social Security system.
From the standpoint of individuals, there's a widespread sense among economists that many retirees would benefit from having more of their wealth in annuities--that is, an amount that would pay out no matter how long they live. In the Fall 2011 issue of my own Journal of Economic Perspectives,
Shlomo Benartzi, Alessandro Previtero, and Richard H. Thaler have an article on "Annuitization Puzzles," which makes the point that when you delay receiving Social Security, you are in effect buying an annuity: that is, you are taking less in the present--which is similar to "paying" for the annuity-- in exchange for a larger long-term payment in the future. They write: "[T]he easiest way to increase the amount of annuity income that families have is to delay the age at which people start claiming Social Security benefits. Participants are first eligible to start claiming benefits at age 62, but by waiting to begin, the monthly payments increase in an actuarially fair manner until age 70. "
They further argue that a good starting point to encouraging such behavior would be to re-frame the way in which the Social Security Administration, and all the rest of us, talk about Social Security benefits. Imagine that, with no change at all in the current law, we all started talking about a "standard retirement age" of 70. We pointed out that you can retire earlier, but if you do, monthly benefits will be lower. If the choice of when to retire was framed in this way, my strong suspicion is that many more people would react differently than when we announce that the "normal retirement age" is 66, and if you wait then your monthly benefits will be higher. Again, people seem to react to what the government designates as the target for retirement age.
However, this labeling change might encourage people to work longer, but it would not affect the solvency of the Social Security system, because those who wait longer to retire are, in effect, paying for their own higher monthly benefits by delaying the receipt of those benefits. However, the Social Security actuaries offer a number of illustrative calculations on their website about possible steps to bolster the financing of the system. One proposal about phasing back the normal age of retirement looks like this: "After the normal retirement age (NRA) reaches 67 for those age 62 in 2022, increase the NRA 2 months per year until it reaches 69 for individuals attaining age 62 in 2034. Thereafter, increase the NRA 1 month every 2 years."
Thus, this proposal would represent no change in the rules for Social Security benefits for anyone born before 1960--and thus in their early 50s at present. Under this proposal, those born after 1960 would face the gradual phase-in--but of course, they would also benefit from having a program that is much closer to fully funded. would face the same phase-in as currently exists. The actuaries estimate that this step by itself would address about 44% of the gap over the next 75 years between what Social Security has promised and the funding that is expected during that time. Given the predicted shortfalls of the Social Security system in the future, and the gains in life expectancy both in the last few decades and expected in the next few decades, and the parlous condition of large budget deficits reaching into the future, I would be open to proposals to phase in a more rapid and more sustained rise in the normal retirement age for Social Security benefits.
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