Pension Plans. Many Workers Don't Know When They Can Retire. Briefing Report to the Chairman, Select Committee on Aging, House of Representatives.

A study assessed the level of workers' knowledge of their pension plan's provisions related to early and normal retirement. The data used were from the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances. The survey, which was based on a nationwide sample of more than 3,800 households and more than 1,000 public and private pension plans that covered them, asked the respondents if they would be eligible for early retirement and when they would first be eligible for full retirement benefits (normal retirement) or reduced retirement benefits (early retirement). The following inferences were drawn on the basis of the data collected in the 1983 survey: (1) over 40 percent of the 22 million workers in pension plans offering early retirement were either incorrect or did not know about their eligibility for early retirement benefits; (2) about 75 percent of the 12 million workers who were correct about being eligible for early retirement benefits were either incorrect or did not know about their eligibility data; (3) workers who would be eligible for early retirement were from 3 to 17 times more likely to know about their eligibility than those who would not be eligible; (4) having had education beyond high school and being more than 5 years from eligibility for early retirement were two factors associated with a higher likelihood of being correct about one's own retirement benefits; and (5) women were from 2.5 to 5 times as likely as men to say that they did not know about their early retirement eligibility. (An appendix details the log-linear analysis used in this study.) (MN)