What age should I retire with Social Security?

This post comes from Emily Brandon at partner site U.S. News & World Report.

The age you begin to collect Social Security benefits affects the payments you will receive for the rest of your life. Checks are reduced if you sign up as soon as possible at age 62, but are increased if you delay claiming up until age 70. Here's when most people sign up for Social Security:

Age 62

A smaller proportion of people have been claiming Social Security at age 62 in recent years, but it continues to be the most popular age to begin receiving payments. 

Some 45% of men born in 1943 and 1944 signed up for retirement benefits at age 62, down from 50% of people born between 1938 and 1942, and a peak of 57% of men born between 1930 and 1934, according to a 2013 Urban Institute analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. 

The share of women claiming Social Security benefits at age 62 has also declined over the past decade, but women continue to be more likely to claim early than men. Half of women born in 1943 or 1944 claimed at age 62, compared with 60% of those born between 1935 and 1937.

Social Security benefits are reduced for workers who sign up at age 62, and the amount of the reduction has recently increased from 20% for people born in 1937 or earlier to 25% for baby boomers born between 1943 and 1954. "If you claim earlier you are getting more of a penalty now than you used to," says Richard Johnson, a senior fellow and director of the program on retirement policy at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research firm. 

The reduction in benefits for people claiming at age 62 will further increase to 30% for everyone born in 1960 or later under current law.

Age 65 

Signing up for Social Security at age 65 is declining in popularity, but the age many people associate with retirement remains the second-most popular claiming age among women and third among men. Nearly a quarter (24%) of men born between 1935 and 1937 signed up for Social Security at age 65, which is the age workers born in 1937 or earlier qualified for unreduced Social Security benefits. 

But retirement at 65 declined to 14% of those born in 1943 and 1944, whose full retirement age increased to 66. People born between 1943 and 1954 get 6.7% smaller checks if they claim at age 65. The proportion of women signing up at age 65 stayed roughly constant throughout the period studied at about 16%.