The COVID-19 pandemic affected older Americans' work and financial situations significantly.
According to the University of Michigan's 2020 Health and Retirement Study of individuals over 50, about 60% of respondents reported that their work was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Fifty-five percent of them had to stop work entirely, 15% lost their job permanently and roughly 20% percent indicated that their work became harder or more risky or dangerous.
Given those responses, a natural conclusion would be that working older Americans would have adjusted their retirement expectations. For instance, they could have pushed their anticipated retirement age to a later date or delayed their planned Social Security claiming age. But according to recent research by Zhikun Liu, a senior research associate with the Employee Benefit Research Institute, those adjustments didn't occur.
Less Financial Impact Than Expected
In the research issue brief, "Staying Optimistic: Older Americans' Retirement Expectations Remain Uninterrupted Despite COVID-19 Impact," Liu notes that despite "a natural upward trend for elderly Americans to anticipate a later and later retirement age longitudinally based on the HRS survey from 1992 to 2020, statistical tests demonstrated little relationship between this natural tendency to delay retirement and the COVID-19 pandemic impact."
In terms of the respondents' finances, 76% stated that their financial situation remained the same and 60% indicated that their household spending did not change in 2020.
"The results of this study imply that elderly American adults' retirement expectations remain uninterrupted despite enduring through the COVID-19 impact on their work and financial situations in 2020," Liu writes.
