Senator Warren’s Social Security Numbers Don't Add Up

Romina Boccia and Ivane Nachkebia

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D‑MA), alongside Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D‑IL) and Richard Blumenthal (D‑CT), sent a letter to President Donald Trump, warning that raising Social Security’s full retirement age from 67 to 69 would cut retirees’ monthly benefits by 17 to 35 percent.

There’s just one problem: the study her letter cites doesn’t support those numbers.

The letter’s key source is a piece by Kyle Ross of the Center for American Progress (CAP), which estimates benefit reductions of roughly 12.5 to 14.3 percent—not 17 to 35 percent. That’s a big difference. Raising Social Security’s eligibility ages is a rational policy response for a program that provides unsustainable benefits to an aging population that lives longer, healthier lives. Misrepresenting the policy’s effects gets in the way of an honest debate.

The Study Warren Cites Contradicts Her Claim

Ross analyzed the effects of gradually raising the full retirement age (FRA) from 67 to 69 between 2027 and 2034. The proposal wouldn’t change the earliest eligibility age (EEA) of 62.

Under current law, claiming Social Security benefits between 62 and 67 reduces monthly benefits relative to what a retiree would receive by waiting. The earlier one retires, the higher the early retirement penalty, with a maximum reduction of 30 percent at age 62. Conversely, retiring after 67 increases benefits by up to 24 percent for those who wait until 70.

Raising only the full retirement age to 67 would reduce monthly benefits at any claiming age between 62 and 70 by increasing early retirement penalties or reducing late retirement credits. CAP’s Kyle Ross summarized these effects in the table below for a median-wage retiree.

Ross’s monthly benefit cut estimates, shown in the “Percentage cut” column, range from 12.5 to 14.3 percent, depending on claiming age. That means even the lower bound of the 17–35 percent range presented in Warren’s letter exceeds the maximum cut estimated in the very study she cites.

So, Where Do Warren’s Numbers Come From?

One possible explanation for these exaggerated figures is that the staff behind the estimates confused early retirement penalties (the column in Ross’s table called ‘Retirement penalty/​credit’) with benefit cuts. Yet that’s unlikely since the 17–35 percent figures don’t appear anywhere in those columns.

A more likely explanation is that the staff behind the letter made a math error.

The letter also expresses the benefit cut range in corresponding dollar terms, $345 to $741 per month. These figures appear in Ross’s analysis.

Here’s what appears to have happened.

Ross calculated those dollar reductions relative to a median worker’s projected Social Security benefit in 2034. Warren’s letter appears to divide those same dollar amounts by today’s average Social Security benefit instead.¹

That’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. Using a smaller benefit amount as the denominator makes the percentage reductions look much larger than they actually are.

If that’s the calculation, the math explains the 17–35 percent figures. It doesn’t justify them.

Should Congress Raise the Retirement Age?

Whether Congress should raise Social Security’s retirement age is a separate question. Reasonable people can disagree. But that debate should begin with accurate numbers.

The case for gradually raising the retirement age is straightforward.

Americans are living longer than when Social Security was created, and, importantly, they’re spending more of those extra years in good health, enabling them to work longer. At the same time, the workers paying for Social Security benefits have declined in numbers compared to the seniors who receive benefits, such that allowing the benefit duration to perpetually increase by maintaining a low retirement age as longevity increases makes the program’s benefits consistently more expensive.

Since Social Security’s first benefit payout in 1940, life expectancy at age 65 has increased by 6.5 years for men and 7.1 years for women. Crucially, a recent study by Liran Einav (Stanford University) and Amy Finkelstein (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) finds that the longevity gains since the 1990s consist entirely of additional healthy years, suggesting that older Americans aren’t merely living longer but also remaining able to work longer.

Yet the full retirement age has increased by only two years, from 65 to 67. As a result, the average expected duration of benefit collection has grown by roughly 4.5 years for men and 5.1 years for women, as retirees are collecting benefits for that much longer.

Gradually raising the retirement age would better align Social Security with longer life expectancies, rather than asking younger workers to finance seniors’ ever-longer retirements through higher taxes or additional borrowing.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has analyzed the same proposal as CAP—gradually raising the FRA from 67 to 69 by 2034. This change wouldn’t close Social Security’s funding gap, but it would be a meaningful step toward this objective.

The program’s long-term shortfall would decline by 24 percent, and Social Security spending as a share of GDP would fall by half a percentage point, from 5.9 percent in 2054 to 5.4 percent.

Notably, CBO finds that because lower earners are more likely to claim disability benefits, which are unaffected by changes to Social Security’s full retirement age, they would experience the smallest reduction in lifetime benefits relative to lifetime earnings if the eligibility age were increased. For workers born in the 1980s, lifetime benefits would fall by about 6 percent for the lowest earners, compared with 8 percent for middle earners and 9 percent for the highest earners (see chart below).

Senator Warren’s letter warns against raising the retirement age, but it relies on figures that contradict the research she cites. The actual benefit reductions from a well-designed retirement-age increase are modest, and when weighed against Social Security’s deteriorating finances, rising longevity, and the availability of disability protections for those who cannot work longer, the case for change is strong. 

With only six years from when the program threatens all beneficiaries with automatic benefit cuts, policymakers owe the public an honest discussion of both the costs of reform and the costs of doing nothing.

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1. The dollar reductions cited in the letter ($345 and $741) appear in Ross’s table and are calculated relative to projected monthly benefits for a median-wage retiree in 2034 ($2,683 at age 62 and $5,745 at age 70). The letter also cites Social Security’s Monthly Statistical Snapshot (February 2026), which reports an average retired-worker benefit of $2,076 per month. Dividing Ross’s dollar figures by that current average benefit yields 16.6 percent ($345 ÷ $2,076) and 35.7 percent ($741 ÷ $2,076), closely matching the letter’s claimed range of 17–35 percent. Because Ross’s dollar reductions are calculated relative to projected 2034 benefits rather than today’s average benefit, this comparison uses different baselines and overstates the percentage reductions.

Source: https://www.cato.org/blog/senator-warrens-social-security-numbers-dont-add