Full retirement age chart: your Social Security age by birth year

Every Social Security conversation I have eventually lands on the same question: what is my full retirement age? The honest answer fits on an index card. It depends on exactly one thing — the year you were born — and the Social Security Administration publishes the entire schedule as a single table. Below is that full retirement age chart, complete, plus what the ages on it actually do to your monthly check if you claim early or late. Born in 1960 or later? Skip to the bottom row: your full retirement age is 67.

The full retirement age chart

This is the SSA’s social security retirement age chart — the official schedule, with the share of your full benefit you would receive if you claimed at exactly 62 — the earliest possible age — alongside it:

The Social Security Administration’s full retirement age schedule. The age-62 percentages are the SSA’s published reductions for claiming at the earliest possible age with that full retirement age.

Read the chart the way the SSA means it: full retirement age is the age at which you receive 100% of the benefit your earnings record has earned. It is not the age you must stop working, not the age you must claim, and not the age Medicare starts. It is a pricing point. Claim before it and the SSA discounts your check, permanently. Claim after it and the SSA adds a premium, up to age 70.

Why the chart climbs in two-month steps

For the program’s first half-century, full retirement age was simply 65. The 1983 Social Security amendments — the last big solvency package Congress passed — raised it in two deliberately slow staircases. The first took it from 65 to 66 for people born from 1938 to 1943. Then came a long plateau at 66 for the 1943–1954 birth years, and then the second staircase: two extra months per birth year from 1955 to 1959, landing on 67 for everyone born in 1960 or later. The steps exist so that no single generation took the whole increase at once — a design choice worth remembering when you read headlines about changing the retirement age again.

What claiming early or late does to the check

The SSA adjusts your benefit by formula, not by negotiation. Claim before full retirement age and the reduction is 5/9 of 1% for each of the first 36 months you are early, and 5/12 of 1% for each month beyond that. That is how a full retirement age of 67 produces the 30% reduction at 62 in the chart: 36 months at the first rate plus 24 at the second is a 30% cut. Wait past full retirement age instead and you earn delayed retirement credits of 8% per year — for anyone born in 1943 or later — until age 70, where the credits stop.

The ages around the chart that are not on it

Three neighbouring ages cause most of the confusion I see, so let me separate them cleanly. 62 is the earliest claiming age for retirement benefits — it appears in the chart only as the measuring point for reductions. 65 is Medicare eligibility, which has never moved with full retirement age and still starts at 65 no matter what the chart says. It is a health-coverage milestone, not a social security age at all. 70 is where delayed credits stop, making it the rational last claiming date. People asking “what is retirement age?” — or searching for the “us retirement age” or “retirement age usa” — are usually hunting for one number, when the system honestly has this cluster of them — and a good retirement age calculator has to juggle them all.

One more distinction matters. A true social security calculator by age would also need your earnings record, because the SSA computes your benefit from your 35 highest-earning years. This chart is the half of the answer that depends on age alone. The other half — whether your savings can carry you to 67, or to 70, before the check even needs to start — is a projection question, and it is the half our retirement calculator answers: enter your savings and contributions and test each claiming age against the “When can I retire?” section’s milestones.

Reading the chart for one real birthday

Take someone born in 1958. The chart gives them a full retirement age of 66 and 8 months. Claim at 62 and the SSA pays 71.7% of their full benefit — the deepest cut in the 66-row family, because they are claiming a full 56 months early. Wait until 70 instead and they collect three years and four months of delayed retirement credits: 40 months at 8% a year adds about 26.7%, producing a benefit of roughly 126.7% of the full amount. On a $2,000 full benefit, that is the difference between about $1,434 a month at 62 and about $2,533 a month at 70 — a spread of nearly $1,100 a month, from one earnings record, decided entirely by the date on the claim. That range is why I keep this chart close at hand: for the 1955–1959 birth years especially, the innocent-looking two-month steps hide real money.

Sources: Social Security Administration (ssa.gov) — full retirement age schedule, early-claim reduction factors and delayed retirement credits, checked October 2026. The $2,000 monthly benefit is an illustration, not an average benefit or a quote.