The Importance of Objective Health Measures in Predicting Early Receipt of Social Security Benefits: The Case of Fatness

Theoretical models argue that poor health will contribute to early exit from the labor market and the decision to take early Social Security retirement benefits (Old-Age or OA benefits). However, most empirical estimates of the causal importance of health on the decision to take early OA benefits have been forced to rely on global measures such as self-rated work limitations or self-rated health. We contribute to the empirical literature by using a more objective measure of health, fatness, to predict early receipt of OA benefits. We do so by estimating the causal impact of fatness within an empirical model using the method of instrumental variables, and testing the robustness of our findings using the most common measure of fatness in the social science literature – body mass index – with what is a more theoretically appropriate measure of fatness – total body fat and percent body fat. Overall, our conclusion is that fatness and obesity are strong predictors of early receipt of OA benefits. Author’s Acknowledgement We thank Maki Ueyama for research assistance and Krisy Gashler for administrative assistance. For helpful comments, we thank John Bound, Charlie Brown, Dean Lillard, Bob Schoeni, Dan Silverman, and conference participants at the University of Michigan Retirement Research Center. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the University of Michigan Retirement Research Center and the Social Security Administration.