Do Immigrants Delay Retirement and Social Security Claiming?

NBER Working Paper No. 25518

Issued in January 2019, Revised in March 2019

NBER Program(s):Economics of Aging, Labor Studies, Public Economics



As the share of older immigrants residing in the U.S. begins to rise, it is important to understand how immigrants’ retirement behavior and security compare to that of natives. This question has implications for the impact of immigration on government finances and for the retirement security of immigrants. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine how immigrants’ retirement and Social Security claiming patterns compare to those of natives. We find that immigrants are significantly less likely than natives to retire or claim Social Security in their early 60s. We do not find heterogeneous effects by ethnicity or age of arrival to the U.S. We also find no evidence that immigrants exit the survey at higher rates than U.S. natives in their late 50s through 60s, a finding that is consistent with immigrants retiring in the U.S. rather than abroad.

Acknowledgments and Disclosures

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w25518

Published: Mary J. Lopez & Sita Slavov, 2020. "Do immigrants delay retirement and social security claiming?," Applied Economics, vol 52(10), pages 1105-1123. citation courtesy of