FRA for Retirement Benefits vs FRA for Survivor Benefits

As mentioned in many articles on this site, there is a difference between the Full Retirement Age (FRA) for Social Security Retirement Benefits and the FRA for Social Security Survivor Benefits.

This is due to the way that the language of the reductions rules is written. The rules are written based upon the earliest age that you are eligible for each type of benefit. Since Survivor benefits are available as early as age 60 under common circumstances, and Retirement Benefits are available at age 62 at the earliest, there is a two-year offset between the two FRA tables, as illustrated below:

Note that each “Born in” year is two years later than the complementary year in the Retirement benefit table.