TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hurd,Michael D.
AU  - Wise,David A.
TI  - Changing Social Security Survivorship Benefits and the Poverty of Widows
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3843
PY  - 1991
Y2  - September 1991
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3843
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3843.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Michael D. Hurd
RAND Corporation
1776 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90407
Tel: 310/451-6945
Fax: 310/451-6923
E-Mail: mhurd@rand.org

David A. Wise
NBER
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA   02138
E-Mail: dwise@nber.org
M1  - published as Michael D. Hurd, David A. Wise. "Changing Social Security Survivorship Benefits and the Poverty of Widows," in Michael D. Hurd and Naohiro Yashiro, editors, "The Economic Effects of Aging in the United States and Japan" University of Chicago Press (1996)

M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1992-04-01
AB  - The paper considers the effect on widows' poverty of changes in Social Security survivorship benefits, by a reduction in couples' benefits so that total Social Security cost is unchanged. A twenty percent increase in survivorship benefits, for example, would reduce the 1989 poverty rate of widows aged 65 to 69 by about twenty-four percent, from 0.25 to 0.19. The poverty rate of couples would be increased by about thirty-three percent, from about 0.06 to about 0.08.
ER  -