Purpose: As part of an ongoing effort to analyze the distributional implications of potential policy reforms to the U.S. Social Security system, we consider the widely discussed reform of earnings sharing. Such an approach has been viewed as a way to "update" Social Security's family benefits based on marital status and as a means to…

Scientific investigations have revealed that behaviors about health and illness states are related to socioeconomic status, gender, and cultural factors. Chronic diseases and comorbidity are common in elderly people when compared to the rest of the population. Major problems of the elderly in Turkey are related to health behaviors, financial…

After a long decline, the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) of older men in the United States leveled off in the 1980s, and began to increase in the late 1990s. We examine how changes in Social Security rules affected these trends. We attribute only a small portion of the decline from the 1960s-80s to the increasing generosity of Social…

Millions of women face bleak retirement futures. In 40 years, when today's 25-year-olds retire, fewer women will be retiring married, and therefore fewer will have access to a husband's retirement income. Young women continue to face a future of significantly lower wages. Caregiving responsibilities continue to fall predominantly on women's…

The U.S. population includes over 23 million women aged 45 to 64 and 17 million women aged 65 and over. Their life experiences are very different from those of men. The median total income of women trails that of men at all ages. Women at all ages are twice as likely as men to be poor. Poverty among the elderly is closely associated with sole…