Tag: death of spouse

Hand holding coins in birds nest.

Abstract Past research has shown that income from the Social Security program has contributed to trends towards smaller households, greater residential independence—the tendency to live alone rather than with others—and a greater prevalence of home ownership late in life. However, the mechanism through which these associations operate has remained relatively unstudied. This paper addresses t…

Social Security sign in a garden

Abstract Our project uses DYNASIM3, the Urban Institute’s dynamic microsimulation model of the U.S. population, to simulate several alternative systems of Social Security auxiliary benefits. We specifically consider earnings sharing, a system in which a husband’s and a wife’s earnings records are combined and averaged over the duration of their marriage when computing Social Security…