Christopher R Tamborini, Kevin Whitman
Social Security Administration, Office of Retirement Policy, Washington, DC 20254, USA. Chris.Tamborini@ssa.gov
Journal of women & aging 2010A number of alternatives to Social Security's auxiliary benefit system have been proposed in the context of changes in American family and work patterns. This article focuses on one modification therein-lowering the 10-year duration-of-marriage requirement for divorced spouses. Using a powerful microsimulation model (MINT), we examine the distributional effects of extending spouse and survivor benefit eligibility to 5- and 7-year marriages ending in divorce among female retirees in 2030, a population largely comprised of baby boomers. Results show that the options would increase benefits for a small share of female retirees, around 2 to 4%, and would not affect the vast majority of low-income divorced older women. However, of those affected, the options would substantially increase benefits and lower incidence of poverty and near poor. Low-income divorced retirees with marriages between 5 and 9 years in length and a deceased former spouse face the greatest potential gains.
Christopher R Tamborini, Kevin Whitman. Lowering social security's duration-of-marriage requirement: distributional effects for future female retirees. Journal of women & aging. 2010;22(3):184-203
PMID: 20661806
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