Social Security retirement benefits in the United States (US) reflect marital histories and lifetime earnings of current and former married couples. Focusing on the link between marital history and benefit eligibility, this article examines women's marital patterns over the past two decades....

This article uses a Restricted-Use File of the 2001 Marital History Topical Module to the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine women's marital histories in relation to Social Security spouse and widow benefit eligibility. To assess marital trends over...

Social science findings routinely rely on proxy-reported economic data in household surveys. A typical assumption is that this information is not biased compared to self-reports, but empirical findings on the issue are mixed. Using a dataset that links workers in the 2004 Survey of Income and...

There are increasing concerns about whether Americans are saving enough for retirement. Recent research has called for improved understanding of the relationship between family structure and economic preparation for retirement at earlier stages of the life course. Using multiple years of the...

Increased policy and academic attention has been placed on promoting retirement savings early in the life course. This study investigates the extent to which retirement savings behavior among young persons, a population for which retirement savings is important but typically low, differs by...

This article focuses on a growing yet understudied subgroup of the elderly in the United States-the never-married. The first section, based on data from the Current Population Survey and a review of the academic literature, examines the current circumstances of never-married retirees,...

Unanticipated changes in family composition can have long-lasting consequences for individuals. This chapter examines the long-term effects of marital dissolution on women's earnings and retirement. Using a longitudinal approach and a fixed-effects model, we consider three main questions. First,...