Tuesday, July 21, 2015

New issue brief: "Does the Social Security 'Statement Add Value?"

The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has released a new Issue in Brief:

Does the Social Security “Statement” Add Value?
by Steven A. Sass

The brief’s key findings are:
  • To help workers better plan for retirement, the Social Security Administration provides a Statement with personalized benefit estimates.
  • Surveys have explored how workers view the Statement, and research studies have examined its effectiveness.
  • The results indicate that workers generally consider the Statement a valuable resource, and it improves their benefit knowledge. 
  • At the same time, studies have not found any effect on workers’ Social Security claiming behavior.
This brief is available here

1 comment:

WilliamLarsen said...

I would like to know how many of those receiving statements actually read page 1 where the SSA states that starting in year "X", SS can pay "Y%" of scheduled benefits.

It has been my experience talking with people that they skip page 1 and go to page 2 and 3.

More people understand their schedule benefit, but I think the same number still are dumb founded about SS's ability to pay scheduled benefits. I think the to get the information to people about payable scheduled benefits would be to put a side by side value by the scheduled benefit and identify this is what could happen to your benefit if no changes are made. It would be easy to do. The statement has the birth year on it and the retirement year. SSA statement also identifies a year where full benefits cannot be paid. Just highlight them and I would guess people would take more of an interest in SS.