Explaining the 2025 Full Retirement Age Change - AMAC Foundation; Epoch Times
You’ve probably seen a flurry of media accounts about the New Year bringing a change to the Social Security full retirement age (FRA). While it’s true that the coming year will set a new marker for those born in 1958 or 1959, there’s nothing new about the schedule for reaching eligibility for unreduced retirement benefits. The schedule was set over four decades ago with P.L. 98-21 (H.R. 1900), congressionally identified as the “Social Security Amendments of 1983” and signed into law on April 20, 1983.
A Brief Bit of History
In 1982, after seven consecutive years of decline in Social Secueity’s financial reserves as benefit payments exceeded incoming revenue, the annual Trustees Report contained this statement: “Without corrective legislation in the very near future, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund will be unable to make benefit payments on time beginning no later than July 1983.”[1] Congress acted immediately and passed the Social Security Amendments of 1983.[2] These reforms primarily included setbacks in full retirement age and the initial levy of federal income tax on benefits for certain taxpayers.
With the implementation of the 1983 Amendments, the Social Security Administration (SSA) projected, “The program will be able to pay benefits on time for the next 75 years under all but the most pessimistic [assumptions].”[3] As a result of these changes, the combined trust fund reserves resumed their growth, reaching a high of $2.9 trillion by year-end 2020.[4]
A Summary of the FRA Changes
The changes scheduled following enactment of the 1983 Amendments called for the FRA applicable to those born between 1943 and 1954 to be set at 66, and to increase by two months each year for those born after 1954 and through 1959. As a result, FRA would reach 66 years and 10 months in 1959, and those born after 1959 would have an FRA of 67.
For a more detailed review of the year-by-year progression of FRA, check out this article posted by Epoch Times contributor Rudy Blalock, which you can access in full here.
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[1] Social Security Administration, 1982 Annual Report–Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Fund, https://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/historical/1982TR.pdf.
[2] Social Security Administration, Social Security Amendments of 1983: Legislative History and Summary of Provisions, https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v46n7/v46n7p3.pdf.
[3] Social Security Administration, 1983 Annual Report–Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Fund, https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/tr/historical/1983TR.pdf.
[4] Social Security Administration, Operations of the Combined OASI and DI Trust Funds, https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/tr/2020/IV_A_SRest.html#126084