Long-term increases in life expectancy have varied for individuals with different lifetime earnings levels. This article examines two hypothetical adjustments to Social Security Old Age and Survivors Insurance benefits that would offset the differential changes in projected life expectancy. The...

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....

Using a rich dataset that links the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation calendar-year 2004 file with Social Security benefit records, this article provides a portrait of the sociodemographic and economic characteristics of Social Security child beneficiaries. We find that...

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...

As part of an ongoing effort to analyze the distributional implications of potential policy reforms to the U.S. Social Security system, we consider the widely discussed reform of earnings sharing. Such an approach has been viewed as a way to “update” Social Security's family benefits based...

The relationship between social insurance, which provides families protection against certain risks, and child economic security is understudied. Using the 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) matched to Social Security Administration benefit records, this article investigates...