Beyond Individual Choice: Social Barriers Influence on Early Social Security Retirement Among Women

Background: 51.8 million retired workers received benefits from the Social Security Administration in 2024. Social Security is the U.S.' most extensive income-support program, as nearly all employees are eligible. As Social Security retirement eligibility and benefit amounts are determined by earning histories, those with lower education (typically associated with lower incomes) and significant gaps in employment (typically associated with lower lifetime earnings) often receive smaller SSA retirement amounts. Caregiving responsibilities for children or aging relatives often lead women to leave the workforce or reduce their participation to less than full-time. Occupational segregation also maintains racial and gender retirement disparities, particularly for Black women who, on average, have lower lifetime earnings than white men and women and Black men.

Methods: Data for this study was drawn from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) (2020), the largest national public use dataset for aging, health, and retirement. With a nationally representative sample of approximately 20,000 people aged 50 and older, the HRS allows for deriving data on health's relationship to multiple social demographic factors over generations. This study's analytic sample consisted of women retirees receiving social security benefits (n =1542). Among them, the majority, 64%, were White-Non-Hispanic (n = 990), 20% were Black/ African American (n = 315), 13% were Hispanic (n = 195), and 3% racial/ ethnic other (n = 40). Descriptive statistics were run for study variables: race, early retirement, health, education level, marital status, and parenting status. Linear regression analysis was performed using SPSS.

Results: Regression analyses revealed that higher education had a significant yet negative association with early retirement. For White-Non-Hispanic women, undergraduate degrees (β = -.682, p =.006) and graduate degrees (β = -1.234, p <.001), and among Black/ African American women, undergraduate degrees (β = -1.08, p =.044) were found to have an inverse relationship with early retirement. Findings possibly suggest that women with the highest educational attainment have higher job satisfaction and more positive working environments, encouraging prolonged workforce participation.

For White-Non-Hispanic women, a significant yet negative association with early retirement was also found among widows with custodial parenting history and poor health (β = -1.198, p =.05). This group possibly retires at normal retirement age, even with failing health, due to the loss of spousal income, increased health care expenses, and potentially lower lifetime earnings due to caregiving responsibilities, which combined, hinder their ability to exit the workforce early when nearing retirement age.

Conclusions and Implications: Understanding how the interactions between education, race, gender, marital and parenting status influence the relationship between women's health and SSA retirement timing is essential for policymakers, financial planners, and social workers. As direct practitioners, it is important that social workers understand how to identify vulnerable populations, provide referrals to appropriate resources for crisis intervention or long-term financial planning, and effectively advocate for equitable policy. Understanding the impact on retirement decisions is specifically important for social workers working in workforce centers and similar settings and those working with aging populations.