No social program is responsible for pulling more people out of poverty each year than Social Security. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the program lifted 22 million people above the federal poverty line in 2023, including 16.3 million adults aged 65 and over.

It’s also a program that retired workers lean on heavily to make ends meet. Spanning 23 years of annual surveys, pollster Gallup has found that 80% to 90% of retirees, including 88% in April 2024, require their Social Security income to cover at least some portion of their expenses.

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However, average Social Security checks can meaningfully differ by age. Let’s take a closer look at how retired-worker benefits are calculated, examine how much the average retired worker is bringing home each month by age, and take a wide-lens look at which, if any, ages are likeliest to maximize lifetime Social Security benefit collection, based on a comprehensive study.

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These four factors are used to calculate your monthly retired-worker benefit

Although Social Security isn’t the easiest government program to understand at times, the four variables used by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to calculate your retired-worker benefit are straightforward. In no order, these are your:

• Earnings history
• Work history
• Full retirement age
• Claiming age

Your earnings and work history are two factors that are tightly linked together. When calculating your monthly retired-worker benefit, the SSA will rely on your 35 highest-earning, inflation-adjusted years. If you’ve received an above-average salary or wage throughout your lifetime (investment income doesn’t count), there’s a reasonably good chance you’ll net an above-average Social Security retired-worker check, as well.

But there’s a catch to this calculation. In the event that you don’t work at least 35 years, the SSA will average in a $0 for every year short of 35. Regardless of how much you’ve earned in the years that do qualify, you’ll have no chance to maximize your monthly benefit without 35 years of work and earnings history.

The third item — full retirement age — is based solely on your birth year. It represents the age you become eligible to collect 100% of your retired-worker benefit. For anyone born in or after 1960, the full retirement age is 67.

The fourth and final factor, and the one that packs the biggest punch in terms of swinging the Social Security payout pendulum, is your claiming age. Though retired-worker benefit collection can begin as early as age 62, the SSA dangles a monetary carrot of sorts to incent patience. For every year a worker waits to collect their benefit, beginning at age 62 and continuing until age 70, their monthly payout can increase by as much as 8%.

Here’s a breakdown of the average Social Security retirement benefit by age

With a clearer understanding of the variables that impact Social Security benefits, it’s time to dive into the variances between average retired-worker benefits by age.

Every year, the SSA’s Office of the Actuary updates a table displaying average monthly retired-worker benefits from ages 62 through 99-plus. The table you’re about to see is based on average monthly checks doled out in December 2024.

The one thing to keep in mind as you peruse this data is that it’s based on the age of the recipient in December 2024 and isn’t necessarily indicative of their claiming age (with the exception of age 62). For instance, a retired-worker beneficiary who’s 66 may have initially collected their payout anywhere from 62 to 66.

Data source: Social Security Administration Office of the Actuary, as of December 2024.

The most glaring takeaway when looking at nearly four decades’ worth of average benefit checks is that claiming age really does matter. While keeping in mind that the above table is based on a recipient’s age in December 2024 and isn’t necessarily indicative of their claiming age, there are some huge variances at opposite ends of the traditional claiming range of 62 through 70.

On one hand, the roughly 594,200 claimants who were receiving (and claimed) a payout at age 62 brought home an average of $1,341.61 in December, or 32% less than the average retired-worker check for all ages of $1,975.34. Claiming at age 62 permanently reduces your monthly payout by up to 25% to 30%, depending on your birth year.

Meanwhile, close to 3.18 million age 70 recipients took home $2,148.12 per month in December, which is the highest average of any age, and 60% more than the earliest filers were receiving at age 62. Claiming benefits at 70 can increase your payout by 24% to 32% above what you’d have received at full retirement age.

The other interesting tidbit you’ll notice is that average monthly benefit checks tend to decline and flatten out in the mid-80s and beyond. This has to do with women have a longer life expectancy than men, as well as women being more likely to act as caretakers.

A Pew Research Center survey from 2021 found that 26% of women were stay-at-home parents, compared to only 7% of men. Fewer years in the labor force adversely impacts the lifetime earning potential for women, which in turn reduces their average benefit from Social Security, as evidenced by this table.

Image source: Getty Images.

There most certainly is a superior Social Security claiming age

Considering the above data on average retired-worker benefits, you might be wondering if being patient pays off when claiming Social Security? An extensive analysis published in 2019 from the researchers at United Income provides a pretty clear answer.

In The Retirement Solution Hiding in Plain Sight, the researchers at United Income used data from the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study to extrapolate the claiming decisions of 20,000 retired workers. The purpose was to see how many had optimized their claim — i.e., chosen the claiming age that maximized their lifetime income collected from Social Security. While this report is six years old, the data it presents still holds true today.

Not surprisingly, only 4% of the 20,000 retired-worker beneficiaries optimized their payout. Without knowing when we’ll die ahead of time, our claiming decision is always going to involve some educated guesswork and luck.

Furthermore, we all take a unique path in life. Thus, your mix of monetary needs, access to retirement accounts, marital status, personal health, tax implications, and so on, will be different from everyone else.

However, United Income’s study did find a distinctive inversion between actual and optimal claims.

On one hand, 79% of all initial claims occurred at ages 62, 63, or 64. But when extrapolated, only 8% of optimized claims were associated with ages 62 through 64. This is to say that claiming early isn’t the best decision for most retirees.

In comparison, 57% of the 20,000 retired workers studied would have maximized their lifetime payout from Social Security had they waited until age 70 to begin collecting. Age 67 was the next-closest in terms of optimization probability at around 10%.

There will absolutely be instances and circumstances where an early filing makes sense. For instance, if you have a chronic illness that can shorten your lifespan, or you’re a significantly lower-earning spouse who wants to generate income for the household, an early filing may very well be your best choice.

But when examining the big picture, age 70 is a superior claiming age. Future retirees would be wise to consider waiting to collect their Social Security income.

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