Social security reforms and poverty among older dual-earner couples

Existing retirement studies have, in the main, focused only on labor supply decisions of couples in which the husband has been the sole earner. This paper extends the focus of analysis to examine retirement among dual-earner couples. It further develops a framework for assessing how several past and prospective Social Security reforms might be expected to affect older working couples' retirement ages and retirement incomes. Two questions are addressed in some detail: (1) What are the likely effects of various changes in Social Security rules on the retirement decisions of older working women and their husbands? and (2) How might these changes alter the incidence of poverty among retired dual-earner couples? Empirical evidence from the United States suggests that many benefit reforms currently being discussed in policy circles will enhance Social Security system revenues, but will also worsen the economic status of an important segment of dual-earner couples.     

Women and retirement

A feminist analysis of retirement is presented by questioning the applicability of traditional definitions and theories of retirement to retired women. The effects of marriage, caregiving and other family obligations on women's retirement are examined within the context of salient social, psychological and economic factors. An empowerment-oriented perspective that considers interactions and connections between family and work roles, public and private and personal and political levels are recommended to alleviate the high poverty rates among older women, to promote parity among men and women during retirement and to emancipate women from substantial involvement in unpaid work, specifically, caregiving and home labor.     

Women and Retirement

SUMMARY

A feminist analysis of retirement is presented by questioning the applicability of traditional definitions and theories of retirement to retired women. The effects of marriage, caregiving and other family obligations on women's retirement are examined within the context of salient social, psychological and economic factors. An empowerment-oriented perspective that considers interactions and connections between family and work roles, public and private and personal and political levels are recommended to alleviate the high poverty rates among older women, to promote parity among men and women during retirement and to emancipate women from substantial involvement in unpaid work, specifically, caregiving and home labor.     

Wives and ex-wives: A new test for homogamy bias in the widowhood effect

Increased mortality following the death of a spouse (the “widowhood effect”) may be due to (1) causation, (2) bias from spousal similarity (homogamy), or (3) bias from shared environmental exposures. This article proposes new tests for bias in the widowhood effect by examining husbands, wives, and ex-wives in a longitudinal sample of over 1 million elderly Americans. If the death of an ex-wife has no causal effect on the mortality of her husband, then an observed association between the mortality of an ex-wife and her husband may indicate bias, while the absence of an effect of an ex-wife’s death on her husband’s mortality would discount the possibility of homogamy bias (and also of one type of shared-exposure bias). Results from three empirical tests provide strong evidence for an effect of a current wife’s death on her husband’s mortality yet no statistically signifi cant evidence for an effect of an ex-wife’s death on her husband’s mortality. These results strengthen the causal interpretation of the widowhood effect by suggesting that the widowhood effect is not due to homogamy bias to any substantial degree.     

Recruitment strategies for conducting research on women's retirement

Currently, little information is available to inform new or returning researchers about designing and conducting research on the topic of women and retirement. Few published studies describe how to access non-probability samples of retired women, yet preliminary evidence suggests women possess distinctive characteristics that affect their retirement as well as complicate the recruitment process. In this article, certain challenges and benefits of conducting research with women in retirement are presented. Next, important issues to consider prior to sampling retired women are described. Finally, specific strategies for identifying and recruiting community-dwelling retired women are presented and discussed.     

An inquiry into self-identification with retirement

ABSTRACT

The aim of this qualitative study was to explore patterns in self-identification with being retired using deductive thematic analysis informed by the life course perspective. For this study, a set of women who self-identified as retired (n = 60) were asked to describe their current work status, major career interruptions, and factors that marked their retirement. This study provides important insights into the heterogeneity in women’s retirement including a subset of individuals who self-identified as retired, not based on their own work force transitions but on that of their spouse or peers. Findings highlight the importance of recognizing that the construction of retirement identity can be context driven, varied, and subjective.     

Recruitment Strategies for Conducting Research on Women's Retirement

ABSTRACT

Currently, little information is available to inform new or returning researchers about designing and conducting research on the topic of women and retirement. Few published studies describe how to access non-probability samples of retired women, yet preliminary evidence suggests women possess distinctive characteristics that affect their retirement as well as complicate the recruitment process. In this article, certain challenges and benefits of conducting research with women in retirement are presented. Next, important issues to consider prior to sampling retired women are described. Finally, specific strategies for identifying and recruiting community-dwelling retired women are presented and discussed.     

Transforming Retirement: New Definitions of Life After Work

This quantitative research study uses survey data of women born between 1946 and 1951 in Australia. It follows earlier work that identified the importance of transitions from work for women of the baby boomer generation. We provide important insights into the lives of women who have partially or fully retired and the changing nature of women's work and retirement. For many women, retirement is characterized by newfound freedoms, opportunities, career change, and evolving identities, yet others view retirement as a continuation of previous occupational and gendered roles and commitments. This study has important implications for retirement policies for women.     

Sex differences in life cycle measures of widowhood

Using formulas which measure life cycle characteristics of widowhood as a function of life table survivorship and age at marriage, we illustrate changes in patterns of widowhood and widowerhood since 1950, as well as differences by race, by age of bride and of groom, and by age differences between spouses. Although the current inequality in the risks of widowhood and widowerhood for the average couple is mostly due to sex differences in mortality, a one year age difference between spouses has about the same impact as does a one year difference in life expectancy. Calculations based on current distributions of age of groom by age of bride indicate that the older the age of groom, the greater the age difference between spouses and the higher the likelihood of a woman outliving her husband: the typical groom who marries in his fifties faces a 4 to 1 chance that he will be outlived by his spouse.     

Creating Retirement Paths: Examples from the Lives of Women

Through in-depth interviews with 40 retired women diverse in age, marital status, ethnicity, income, and occupational background, we explored how women experience retirement. Following our analysis, we identified five retirement pathways: family-focused, service-focused, recreation-focused, employment-focused, and disenchanted retirements. These pathways represent dominant activities and interests at the time the women were interviewed and challenge the cultural portrayal of retirement as an unvarying life stage. The participants' narratives provide a glimpse into the pathways retired women create by revealing the complexity of later life and the changing nature of retirement.     

Lesbians over 60 speak for themselves

With all its faults, this study, begun in 1983, is the first attempt to reach a nationwide representation of lesbian elders in order to gather information about their background, their relationship with their families of origin, and, for those married to men, with their husbands, children, and grandchildren. It explores their sexual behavior, both their physical and psychological health, and how aging has affected them. With the relatively meagre data available, it tries to make some comparison between lesbians and gay men over 60. All of this is just a beginning, an effort, it is hoped, that will encourage researchers to investigate further this hidden population that is another fascinating component of our diverse society. Through our research, we established that gay women of advanced age, as we have long surmised, are everywhere. Like their younger cohorts, they live in all regions of America, rural as well as urban. They come in all colors and are from all occupations: professional, business, clerical, trades, domestic work, and land management, to name a few. Many of them are now retired. Their formal education ranges from high school diplomas to doctorate degrees. A few are financially well off, while another few live below the poverty line. The rest enjoy reasonable comfort in their own homes, on modest incomes. In both political and religious affiliation, they tend to be liberal. Their sexual history runs the gamut from exclusively homosexual, through equally homosexual and heterosexual, to asexual. As they age and sex becomes a less significant part of their relationships, companionship grows more important. They prefer to associate with other lesbians within 10 years of their own age, whom they meet in community social groups, through friends, or at work--but not in bars. They do not relish the thought of ending their lives in any institution for the aged, but would consider a gay/lesbian intergenerational retirement community acceptable. Their most serious problems, even with the advantaged group surveyed, are those that affect many women of advanced age in our society: loneliness and economic worries. Although the feminization of poverty has been a topic under public scrutiny for some time, because it involves women of all ages, less attention has been paid to it in relation to the elderly. The equally disabling condition brought on by their isolation and loneliness has also been disregarded.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

The retirement consumption puzzle in Japan

In this paper, I examine, using Japanese cross-section data, whether “the retirement consumption puzzle” exists, and if so, why. My results show that both the anticipated consumption during retirement of working households and the actual consumption during retirement of retired households are much lower than the actual consumption before retirement of working households. I find that the anticipated decline in consumption after retirement is due primarily to the anticipated decline in family size after retirement, but that it might also be due partly to other factors. These results suggest that consumption does indeed decline after retirement, but that this decline is largely due to factors that are consistent with the life cycle hypothesis.

Older Widows' Early Bereavement Adjustments

Older Black women, categorically rank at the top with regards to the greatest incidence of poverty. This paper examines the construct of poverty and the salient factors that contribute to poverty among older Black women. An analysis of the various factors: income, Social Security, private pensions, widowhood, labor force participation and education, all of which contribute to the impoverishment of women in late life, are explored. Implications for policy as well as recommendations to reduce poverty among older Black women are provided.     

Exploring the Relationship Between Employment History and Retired Women's Social Relationships

This study explores the relationship between retired women's employment history and their social integration and social support networks in retirement. Employment history is defined by former occupation (professional, paraprofessional, nonprofessional) and job continuity (discontinuous and continuous). The sample consists of 330 retired women ranging in age from 50 to 83 years, with diverse occupational histories, who were retired an average of 3.5 years. Results indicate occupational status may influence women's social integration, part-time employment, caregiving tasks, and satisfaction with social support. Continuity of employment appears to only marginally influence social integration with no impact on social support or satisfaction with social support.     

The Retirement Life Course in America at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

As the baby boom cohorts expand the number of U.S. retirees, population estimates of the employment, withdrawal and reentry behaviors of older Americans’ remain scarce. How long do people work? How frequently is retirement reversed? How many years are people retired? What is the modal age of retirement? And, how do the patterns for women compare to those for men? Using the 1992–2004 Health and Retirement Study, we estimate multistate working life tables to update information on the age-graded regularities of the retirement life course of men and women in the United States. We find that at age 50 men can expect to spend half of their remaining lives working for pay, while women can expect to spend just one-third. Half of all men and women have left the labor force by ages 63 and 61, respectively. Although the majority of retirement exits are final, variation in the nature and duration of the retirement process is substantial, as about a third of men’s and women’s exits are reversed. By quantifying these patterns for men and women, we provide a sound empirical basis for evaluating policy designed to address the financial pressures population aging places on public and private pension systems.     

Parental retirement timing: the role of unanticipated events in the lives of adult children

Although anecdotal evidence of older parents postponing retirement to financially support their grown children is common, the empirical evidence is scarce. In this paper, we use data from the 1992 to 2010 waves of the Health and Retirement Study to identify a broad set of pivotal events in the lives of adult children. First, we determine whether these events affect subsequent financial transfers from parents to children over multiple years. Next, we determine whether those events that result in subsequent transfers also shift parental retirement expectations. Finally, we quantify the impact of the unexpected children’s events on retirement realizations, moving beyond the correlational analyses in prior literature. Our findings show that a child’s move out of a parental home decreases both expectations and realizations of working after age 65. The magnitude of this effect is similar to that of an own health shock experienced during pre-retirement years.     

Husbands' and wives' relative influence on fertility decisions and outcomes

This research was supported by NICHD Center for Population Research Contract No. HD52807 and Research Scientist Development Award No. AA00002 from NIAAA to the author. The important contributions of Philip Bardsley to this research and to earlier drafts of this paper are gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are also due to Tom Day and Linda Moody Chilingar for their data analytic and statistical skills and to Cathey Heron for her assistance throughout the course of this project.When couples were in conflict about short-term fertility, wives had the same or somewhat greater influence over actual outcomes than did husbands, especially when the wife was the one who did not desire a child. Antecedent wife demographic, attitudinal and couple interactional variables had more influence on short-term fertility decisions made than did antecedent husband variables. However, inclusion of husband data as well as wife data increased discrimination between those deciding to have or not have a child.     

Effect of Retirement on Cognition: Evidence From the Irish Marriage Bar

This study empirically investigates the relationship between retirement duration and cognition among older Irish women using microdata collected in the third wave of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression estimates indicate that the longer an individual has been retired, the lower the cognitive functioning, with other factors thought to affect cognition held constant (e.g., age, education, and early-life socioeconomic conditions). However, retirement is potentially endogenous with respect to cognition because cognition may affect decisions relating to retiring. If so, the OLS estimates will be biased. To test for this possibility, instrumental variable (IV) estimation is used. This method requires an IV that is highly correlated with retirement duration but not correlated with cognition. The instrument used in this study is based on the so-called marriage bar, the legal requirement that women leave paid employment upon getting married, which took effect in Ireland in the 1930s and was abolished only in the 1970s. The IV regression estimates, along with formal statistical tests, provide no evidence in support of the view that cognition affects retirement decisions. The finding of a small negative effect of retirement duration on cognition is robust to alternative empirical specifications. These findings are discussed in the wider context of the effects of work-like and work-related activities on cognition.     

Population and Poverty in Classical Theory: Testing a Structural Model for India

There has for many years been debate over the relationships between population growth rates and poverty. India is a country which provides a good testing ground for hypotheses about this relationship because since Independence a relatively high proportion of the population have lived in poverty; and there also exist reasonable data. This paper develops a simple structural model to investigate the relationship between population growth and poverty in particular, testing a series of hypotheses developed from the work of Marx and Malthus. The data are analysed at state level, and attention is drawn to the problems that this might cause as behaviour is typically determined at the individual household level. The results show that agricultural productivity and the process of landlessness are better predictors of poverty at a state level than the population growth rate. It is argued that the results fit better with the views of Marx than those of Malthus.