young adults who were married were more likely than all other groups (including cohabitors) to perceive retirement as an important savings goal and to have an individual retirement account. Married persons were more likely than their single counterparts to participate in a defined contribution pension plan. Single women fared particularly poorly on retirement savings outcomes. A range of possible theoretical links between marriage and retirement savings at young adulthood are discussed.Limited retirement savings is a major contributing factor to economic vulnerability among the elderly (
Large-scale changes in American family structures over the past decades have important implications for the retirement experiences of women. In this study, the authors use a restricted-use file of the Marital History Module of the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation to investigate changes in the marital histories of women aged 40 to 69 years between 1990 and 2004, with a focus on outcomes relevant for Social Security spouse and widow benefit eligibility. Multinomial and binary logistic regression analyses show significant changes in women's marital patterns since 1990, with more substantial shifts occurring among recent cohorts. Due to downward trends in marriage, the authors find a modest decline in Social Security spouse and widow benefit eligibility in 2004, particularly among Black women born toward the end of the baby boom generation.
A 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.
The Social Security Administration's simulation model known as MINT (Modeling Income in the Near Term) is used to examine the projected health and economic status of Baby Boomers and their parents during retirement. Projections indicate that boomers will enjoy higher levels of economic well-being and health than their parents, yet the distribution of income and wealth is more unequal among Boomers. For example, the ratio of income to poverty-level income grows three times faster at the 90th percentile than at the 10th percentile. Health problems are concentrated among persons of lower economic status in both generations, but the degree of concentration does not increase across generations.
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