A Social Security Reform for Mom
Created in the 1930s, Social Security’s spousal benefit – it’s half of a retired husband’s benefit – was the way to compensate housewives for the work of raising children.
The world has changed, but Social Security hasn’t been modified to reflect the rise of the full-time, working mother.
Today, married women frequently have earned enough to collect Social Security based on their own employment histories, rather than a spousal benefit. The problem comes when their earnings are reduced – and ultimately their Social Security benefits – because they disrupted their career paths and sacrificed pay raises to care for their children.
Single motherhood has also become very common, which means that a wide swath of women have no access to spousal and survivor benefits at all. Due to a higher divorce rate, one in four first marriages don’t last the full 10 years that Social Security requires to qualify for these benefits.
The erosion of spousal benefits points to a future in which “large numbers of women are going to move through retirement with more disadvantages” than previous generations, concludes a recent report by the Center for Retirement Research.
This problem could be addressed if Social Security gave credit to parents for caregiving. Caregiver credits are already pervasive in Europe, including Austria, Germany, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and they take various forms.
In this country, policy experts have proposed two different approaches to help parents with children under age six by increasing the earnings that dictate the size of their benefit checks.
The first approach would drop as much as five of their lowest-earning years from the 35-year average that Social Security uses in its standard benefit formula. A second way to boost parents’ earnings records and benefits would be to credit them directly with wages equal to half of Social Security’s average wage index (about $25,000 in 2018) for up to five years that they’re out of the labor force.
Given the fiscal constraints facing Social Security, the cost of adding caregiver credits could be paid for by trimming benefits for the highest-earning workers.
Modernizing the program to accommodate mothers would recognize their economic value. But a bonus of the earnings credit is that it would improve Social Security’s overall adequacy by improving the financial situation of mothers, who have a greater risk of falling into poverty.
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Seems you always forget the women in the 70’s who are caregivers to their husbands for 30+ years. They could not work as they had to stay home to manage the sick and the old.
Women who had children choose to have children & choose to divorce. Obviously, you forget that the average person marries 3-4 times. There is no concern for Social Security benefits or they would act differently.
This is a truly interesting topic given the changing family roles today; SS doesn’t inherently favor one gender or another. Once again, it’s almost always about personal choices, as can be seen in each area the article mentions:
– which spouse chooses to stay home to raise the children
– or, neither and they go back to work and choose someone else (family or daycare)
– either spouse can choose to earn on their own account rather than their spouse’s
– single mother/fatherhood is a choice
– getting a full 10 years employment (or not) is a choice
– accessing spousal benefits (or not) is a choice
Actually, a disrupted career pays back a higher % of earnings than a full career – already wealth redistribution built into the SS system. And more redistribution?
SS’s flexibility and strength is that it allows and accommodates people to choose how they want to use it, how they want to live their lifestyles, rather than preferring one gender over another. It’s now truly fair and balanced, playing no gender favorites. Life is full of choices. Outcomes shouldn’t forced.
In these days of claims of unequal treatment, stereotyping, etc., simply stepping up and making equal decisions, rather than expecting the government to accommodate one’s personal choices is the way to go. Basically, make decisions the way one wants to be treated.
(And of course, ultimately bundling it all up with the blanket of wealth redistribution. Aaaargh!)
It’s almost always about making good personal choices.
Overall, women receive a higher proportion of Social Security benefits during their lifetimes because they live longer than men. It may be reasonable to propose a higher Social Security rate for men in general to compensate for this gender benefit disparity.
Women raise taxpayers! They should receive more credit than they do for that essential and unrecognized benefit. SS has always been a pay it forward program. Our parents paid for our grandparents and boomers paid for their parents. Our biggest demographic problem of today is that women are having fewer children and they are having them later in life. Last year the US had the smallest population growth rate .65% in 80 years. The US needs immigrants…Globally educated and uneducated from south of the border to replace those future taxpayers not born in the US.