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About Raising Social Security’s Full Retirement Age - People's Policy Project
Social Security’s full retirement age, referred to as your “FRA,” is the age at which you get 100% of the benefit you’ve earned from a lifetime of working. Claim Social Security before your FRA and your benefit will be smaller; claim after your FRA and your benefit will be even more than your FRA amount. So FRA sits squarely in the spotlight of political discourse about Social Security because changing it means altering the formula which determines how much your benefit will be, regardless of your age when you claim. Increasing the FRA is highly probable in any serious Social Security reform proposal because life expectancy has increased substantially since the current FRA maximum of 67 was set nearly four decades ago, so increasing the FRA is a perfectly reasonable reaction to that fact. Nevertheless, zeroing in on Social Security’s full retirement age as a target for reform is, perhaps, a bit misguided when you consider the savings potential of reforming other American old age benefit programs, as discussed in this article by Matt Bruenig appearing at the People’s Policy Project. Click here to read more.