The age at which you can receive your full retirement benefit is called your full retirement age.
Full retirement age (also known as normal retirement age) determines when you can receive your full retirement benefit. If you choose to begin receiving retirement benefits earlier, yourbenefit will be a reduced percentage of the amount you would have received if you waited, as explained here. You can also receive an increased benefit by delaying still further, until after your full retirement age.
Full Retirement Age
For a long time, full retirement age was fixed at 65 years. In a major overhaul designed to improve the solvency of the system back in 1983, Congress passed a law that increased the full retirement age for people born after 1937. The following table gives the full retirement age under current law:
| Full Retirement Age | |
| Year of Birth | Full Retirement Age |
| 1937 and earlier | 65 |
| 1938 | 65 and 2 months |
| 1939 | 65 and 4 months |
| 1940 | 65 and 6 months |
| 1941 | 65 and 8 months |
| 1942 | 65 and 10 months |
| 1943 – 1954 | 66 |
| 1955 | 66 and 2 months |
| 1956 | 66 and 4 months |
| 1957 | 66 and 6 months |
| 1958 | 66 and 8 months |
| 1959 | 66 and 10 months |
| 1960 and later | 67 |
For purposes of this chart (both determining the year of birth and the month in which full retirement age is reached), people born on the first day of a month are treated as if they were born at the end of the preceding month.