How 65 Became America’s Default Retirement Age

Before the 1930s, the concept of retiring in old age was obscure in the United States. The 1913 edition of Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary defined the word retire simply as “to go back or return; to draw back or away; to keep aloof.”

Whether working in agriculture or joining the growing urban workforce, most people held jobs until they died or physically couldn’t work. By some estimates, more than three-quarters of U.S. males aged 65 and older were employed in the late 19th century. Older adults who were unable to work moved into poorhouses or lived with family members.

The modern concept of retirement really took hold in the decades after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Act of 1935. During the Great Depression, the legislation created a federally administered retirement pension system funded through universal payroll taxes. Roughly half of U.S. workers—mainly in industry and commerce—became eligible for these monthly benefits at age 65.

Here’s how federal lawmakers weighed historical precedent, practical judgment and statistical calculations to settle on the retirement age of 65.

The country’s first public pension fund, established in 1857, provided disability benefits to injured New York City police officers and the city began allocating retirement benefits to officers in 1878, starting at age 55. In 1862, the United States established a Civil War Pension program for disabled veterans and their families, but veterans couldn’t qualify due to old age until 1906.

The American Express Company launched the first private pension plan in 1875 and set its retirement age at 60. The small number of corporation pensions that followed were usually employer-funded and paid workers a specific monthly sum at retirement. By late 1934, 28 states and two U.S. territories had old-age pension laws. These state pension systems typically set their retirement ages to either 65 or 70. 

“Most of the action before the 1930s was at the state level, because there was a real question [about] whether the federal government had the power to enact these proposals,” says Nancy J. Altman, president of advocacy group Social Security Works and author of The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision to Bush’s Gamble. By 1935, many industrialized countries, particularly in Europe, had pension systems in place—the first dating back to 1889 in Germany. 

The Stock Market Crash of October 1929 plunged America into the Great Depression, a period of high unemployment and financial uncertainty. After taking office in March 1933, President Roosevelt passed a flurry of New Deal legislation to provide relief through public works, welfare and bank reform programs.

“One weakness that really got exposed by the Great Depression was the financial insecurity of older workers,” Tyler Bond, a senior fellow at National Academy of Social Insurance and former research director at the nonprofit National Institute on Security Retirement. “There was really no concept of retirement as we would think of it today—401(k) plans didn’t exist at the time. Some well-to-do Americans might have had personal savings that they could have drawn on in retirement.”

In June 1934, Roosevelt tasked the new Committee on Economic Security—led by Labor Secretary Frances Perkins—with creating the framework for what became the Social Security Act. The legislation allocated federal funding to states for immediate aid to seniors and other vulnerable groups and created a framework for national unemployment insurance. 

It also established the federal old-age pension system as a long-term “social security” measure designed to protect people aged 65 and older against future hardship. The first payments were initially expected to begin in January 1942.

The committee’s decision to use age 65 was based partly on precedents set in existing state pension plans and a federal Railroad Retirement System passed by Congress in 1934. Robert J. Myers, then an actuary on Roosevelt’s committee, later described the federal government’s decision as “admittedly arbitrary and empirical.” Drawing on financial projections and life expectancy data, the committee calculated that age 65 would likely create the most self-sustaining system without requiring steep payroll tax increases.

“Now here’s the arbitrary part. Age 65 was picked because 60 was too young and age 70 was too old,” Myers wrote in his 1992 memoir. “So we split the difference.”

Myers debunked the urban legend crediting German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck with setting the age 65 precedent when he started the country’s pension system in the late 1800s. In reality, Bismarck had used age 70. It wasn’t lowered to 65 until 1916—18 years after Bismarck’s death.

“I think these rounded numbers—65, 70, 75—are innately more appealing to people and make a lot more sense than saying 62 or 68,” says Edward Berkowitz, professor emeritus of history and public policy at George Washington University and author of multiple books about social security.

The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Social Security Act in 1937 in two separate but related decisions, and in 1939, Congress passed an amendment that moved up the date of the first social security payments by two years, to January 1940. Over decades, social security benefits were gradually expanded to include workers’ dependents, farmers, self-employed workers, nonprofit employees and people with disabilities.

By midcentury, early retirement allowed seniors to collect reduced social security benefits beginning as early as age 62. With the later advent of delayed retirement, people could also receive increased social security benefits if they postponed claiming until age 70. 

By the time the Social Security Act expanded into health insurance for seniors and low-income individuals in 1965, the concept of retirement had gained widespread acceptance. The 1983 edition of Webster’s Dictionary defined retired as “withdrawn from one’s position or occupation, having concluded one’s working or professional career.” That same year, a Social Security Act amendment initiated a gradual increase—from 65 to 67—in the eligible age to collect full retirement benefits.

The modern U.S. retirement system became more complex with the rise of individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and 401(k) plans. By 1985, only 10.8 percent of adults aged 65 and older worked—a figure that has since rebounded as Americans increasingly remain employed into their 70s and beyond. As of October 2025, nearly 56 million American seniors were collecting social security benefits, often supplemented by pensions, personal savings and other investments.