We verify that widows are much more likely than couples to be poor and that they make up a large proportion of the poor elderly; 80 percent are widows or other single individuals. Then we seek to explain why the single elderly are poor, with emphasis on widows. We do this by tracing back over time their financial status, using the Longitudinal Retirement History Survey. The death of the husband very often induces the poverty of the surviving spouse, even though the married couple was not poor. While only about 9 percent of prior couples are poor, approximately 35 percent of the subsequent widows are. A large proportion of the wealth of the couple is lost when the husband dies. In addition we find that: (1) the prior households of poor widows earned and saved less than the prior households of non-poor widows, (2) more of the smaller accumulated wealth was lost at the death of the husband, (3) the absence of survivorship benefits or life insurance insured that the loss in wealth would leave the widow poor thereafter.
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2325.
Length: Date of creation: Mar 1989 Date of revision: Publication status: published relationship to a non-chapter. This should not happen. Please contact NBER. Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2325
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Michael D. Hurd & John B. Shoven, 1983.
"The Economic Status of the Elderly,"
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in: Financial Aspects of the United States Pension System, pages 359-398
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[Downloadable!]
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
Karen E. Dynan & Jonathan Skinner & Stephen P. Zeldes, 2000.
"Do the Rich Save More?,"
NBER Working Papers
7906, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Karen E. Dynan & Jonathan Skinner & Stephen P. Zeldes, 2004.
"Do the Rich Save More?,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(2), pages 397-444, April.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Jonathan S. Skinner, 1996.
"Is Housing Wealth a Sideshow?,"
NBER Chapters,
in: Advances in the Economics of Aging, pages 241-272
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!]