TY  - JOUR
AU  - Goda,Gopi Shah
AU  - Shoven,John B.
AU  - Slavov,Sita Nataraj
TI  - Social Security and the Timing of Divorce
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13382
PY  - 2007
Y2  - September 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13382
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13382.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Gopi Shah Goda
Stanford University
SIEPR
366 Galvez St.
Stanford, CA 94305
Tel: 650/736-0480
Fax: 650/723-8611
E-Mail: gopi@stanford.edu

John B. Shoven
Department of Economics
579 Serra Mall at Galvez Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6015
Tel: 650/723-3273
Fax: 650/723-8611
E-Mail: shoven@stanford.edu

Sita Slavov
Department of Economics
Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, CA 90041
Tel: 323/259-1461
E-Mail: sslavov@oxy.edu
AB  - Social Security provides spousal benefits in retirement to secondary workers in married couples based on the primary worker's earnings record. In addition, Social Security pays spousal benefits to divorced secondary workers whose marriages lasted at least ten years. However, if a marriage failed in less than ten years, no spousal benefits are paid.  The spousal benefit is particularly valuable to secondary workers in couples where there is a large disparity in earnings between the primary worker and the secondary worker. We examine whether these couples, who have more to gain from extending their marriage to ten years, are more likely to delay divorce to the tenth year relative to a control group. We find that vulnerable couples are slightly more likely to delay divorce from year nine to year ten; however, the effect is statistically insignificant and small in magnitude. While the "cliff"-vesting of retirement benefits for divorced spouses raises equity concerns, it does not appear to distort incentives for divorce.
ER  -