Married Women's Projected Retirement Benefits: An Update

Abstract

This Note uses the latest version of the Social Security Administration’s Modeling Income in the Near Term microsimulation model to updated earlier projections of Social Security retirement benefits for married women. Changes in women’s earnings in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries will sharply change the predominant type of Social Security benefits received by current and future beneficiary wives. Benefit levels will be determined more by wives’ own lifetime earnings than by the lifetime earnings of their husbands. At least four-fifths of wives in the late baby boom (born 1956–1965) and generation X (born 1966–1975) cohorts will receive their initial Social Security benefits based solely on their own earnings. For many of those women, benefits based on their own earnings record will account for most (91–92 percent) of their total Social Security benefit amount.

Keywords: Economics of aging, Social Security, retirement, earnings, women, couples, microsimulation

JEL Classification: C530, H550, J120, J140, J160, J260, J300