To the Editor:
Why not encourage more people to defer Social Security payments by improving the incentives for deferral and communicating them better? Under current Social Security law there is an 8 percent increase in benefits, but only up to age 70, for people who choose to wait until after their full retirement age (66 in my case) for payments to start.
If the annual increase was more than 8 percent and if the deferment option continued beyond age 70, maybe more people who could afford to defer would do so, helping to slow the fund’s outflows.
Alice Bray
New York, Nov. 16, 2010
The writer is a former benefits lawyer.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 