Example: Ms. D reaches age 62 in June 1979. Her total 1937-1950 social security earnings are $40,000 and she had social security earnings of $7,100 in 1976 and $6,300 in 1977. Since she reaches age 62 after 1978, we first compute her primary insurance amount under the average-indexed-monthly-earnings method (§§ 404.210 through 404.212 ). As of June 1981, it is $170.50, which is the minimum primary insurance amount applicable, because her average indexed monthly earnings of $50 would yield only $56.50 under the benefit formula. Ms. D reached age 62 after 1978 but before 1984 and her guaranteed alternative under the average-monthly-wage method as of June 1981 is $170.30, which is the minimum primary insurance amount based on average monthly wages of $48. (These amounts include the 9.9, the 14.3, and the 11.2 percent cost-of-living increases effective June 1979, June 1980, and June 1981 respectively.)
Ms. D is also eligible for the old-start method. We first allocate $3,000 of her 1937-1950 earnings to each of her 13 computation base years starting with the year she reached age 21 (1938) and ending with 1950. The remaining $1,000 is credited to the year she reached age 20. Ms. D, then, has 42 computation base years (14 before 1951 and 28 after 1950).
Example: From the example in paragraph (c)(2) of this section, we see that Ms. D's elapsed years total 40 (number of years at ages 22 to 61, both inclusive). Her benefit computation years, therefore, must total 35. Since she has only 16 years of actual earnings, we must include 19 years of zero earnings in this old-start computation to reach the required 35 benefit computation years.
We next divide her total social security earnings ($53,400) by the 420 months in her benefit computation years and find her average monthly wage to be $127.
We apply the old-start computation formula to Ms. D's average monthly wage as follows: 40 percent of the first $50 of her average monthly wage ($20.00), plus 10 percent of the remaining $77 of her average monthly wage ($7.70), for a total of $27.70.
We then apply 14 1-percent increments to that amount, increasing it by $3.88 to $31.58. We find $31.58 in column I of the December 1978 benefit table in appendix III and find her primary insurance amount of $195.90 on the same line in column IV. We apply the 9.9 percent automatic cost-of-living increase effective for June 1979 to $195.90 and get an old-start primary insurance amount of $215.30 which we then increase to $246.10 to reflect the 14.3 percent cost-of-living increase effective for June 1980, and to $273.70 to reflect the June 1981 increase. Since that primary insurance amount is higher than the $153.10 primary insurance amount computed under the average-monthly-wage method and the $153.30 primary insurance amount computed under the average-indexed-monthly-earnings method, we base Ms. D's benefits (and those of her family) on $215.30 (plus later cost-of-living increases), which is the highest primary insurance amount.
20 C.F.R. §404.241