Purpose of the Study: Our study provides a national portrait of the Baby Boom generation, paying particular attention to the heterogeneity among unmarried Boomers and whether it operates similarly among women versus men. Design and Methods: We used the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Census 5% samples and the 2009 American Community Survey (ACS) to document…

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…

Used longitudinal data to investigate factors associated with evaluations of work, retirement, and well-being of 1,398 never-married, widowed, and divorced/separated men and women. Factors associated with evaluations tended to be similar across marital status. Formerly married women especially seemed to warrant attention of practitioners who plan…

Suggests reasons for expecting an increase in the divorce rate for the population over age 65. Knowledge about the effects of marital status upon well-being suggests that being divorced or separated is detrimental to one's social and economic welfare in old age. (Author)