国会预算办公室-提高社会保障的完全退休年龄（英）

www.cbo.gov CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE Phillip L. Swagel, Director U.S. Congress Washington, DC 20515 September 25, 2024 Honorable Brendan Boyle Ranking Member Committee on the Budget U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 Re: Raising the Full Retirement Age for Social Security Dear Ranking Member Boyle: You have asked the Congressional Budget Office to provide information about the effects that increasing—from 67 to 69—the age at which workers become eligible for full retirement benefits from Social Security would have on workers’ benefits and on the program’s finances. Specifically, you asked how such an increase in the full retirement age (FRA) would affect people’s benefits differently depending on the decade in which they were born, their earnings, and their sex. All people affected by such an increase in the FRA would receive a smaller amount of Social Security benefits over their lifetime. Workers who chose to delay claiming their retirement benefits by the same number of months as the increase in the FRA would receive the same monthly benefit for a shorter period. Those workers who claimed retirement benefits at the same age as they would have claimed them under current law would receive a smaller benefit for the same number of years. The reduction in Social Security benefits would improve the program’s finances. Those projections reflect the assumption that Social Security will continue to pay benefits as scheduled under current law, regardless of the status of the program’s trust funds. CBO projects that the balance of Social Security’s trust funds, were they combined, will be exhausted (reach zero) in fiscal year 2034; at that point, the combined balance would no longer Honorable Brendan Boyle Page 2 cover the gap between scheduled benefits and annual trust fund receipts.1 If, instead, CBO’s projections reflected the assumption that benefits were limited to the amounts payable from dedicated funding sources after the exhaustion date, benefits would be smaller than scheduled after that date. Social Security’s Full Retirement Age The age at which workers become eligible for full retirement benefits from Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program depends on when they were born. Under current law, the FRA is 67 for workers born after 1959. (For workers born earlier, the FRA is lower.) Regardless of when they were born, workers who have worked for enough years to qualify for Social Security benefits may claim those benefits as early as age 62. Their monthly benefit amount is adjusted on the basis of how much earlier or later than their FRA they choose to start receiving benefits: The older a worker is (up to age 70) when they begin receiving benefits, the larger their monthly benefit will be.2 A Policy That Would Raise the Full Retirement Age You requested information about a policy that would gradually increase the FRA to 69. For workers born in 1965, the FRA would be 67 years and 3 months, and it wo