Time to Give Back? Social Security Eligibility at Age 62 and Civic EngagementWe thank anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. This is a revision of APEP Working Paper 0081.

Abstract

How does retirement eligibility affect time allocation toward socially valuable activities? I exploit the sharp eligibility threshold for Social Security early retirement benefits at age 62 using a regression discontinuity design and 21 years of American Time Use Survey data (2003–2023). I document a first-stage decline in work time at the eligibility threshold, confirming that Social Security eligibility enables reduced labor supply. The reduced-form estimates suggest that crossing the eligibility threshold increases the probability of volunteering on any given day by approximately 0.9–1.9 percentage points, a 14–29 percent increase relative to the pre-threshold mean of 6.5 percent. However, because age is observed only in integer years (a discrete running variable), standard RD inference may overstate precision. Using clustered standard errors by age and local randomization inference, the confidence intervals widen substantially, and some specifications no longer reject zero at conventional levels. Nonetheless, the pattern of results across multiple inference methods suggests a positive effect. These findings highlight both the potential positive externalities of retirement programs and the methodological challenges of applying RDD to discrete running variables.