While the income disparity between widowed women and similarly aged married couples is well documented, we know far less about widows’ wealth holdings and how they compare to those of other households. Data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation are used to investigate the amount and composition of wealth held by four different groups: continuously married women, women who would soon be widowed, recent widows, and long-standing widows. The analyses reveal that about-to- be-widowed women have fewer assets than intact couples. From the data on recent widows we infer a decline in wealth holdings at the time of the husbands’ deaths. These wealth findings parallel what we know about income changes that surround the death of a spouse. The estimates also show that, generally, annuitizing wealth changes by very little the income flows and poverty risk among low-income widows.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Thomas Krichel).
Related research
Keywords:
References listed on IDEAS 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.: