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An Alert to Women
By James R. Shaw, M.A., President & CEO
The Shaw Group, Disability Specialists
Statistics indicate that elderly widows as a group are the poorest of the elderly. They live longer, often outliving their savings; they are likely to earn less than men and thus have lower benefits; and are less likely to have worked and become entitled to their own benefits. Nearly three out of four older people living in poverty are women.
As a woman, how can you avoid this fate? While it is true that it will depend upon many decisions made over your lifetime, it may help to look at the decisions you make that affect your Social Security protection.
For example, a woman is more likely to qualify for benefits on the basis of her husband’s earning than a man is to qualify for benefits on his wife’s earnings. These include wife’s benefits, mother’s benefits, widow’s benefits, or a divorced spouse benefit. This means that women need to be aware of how Social Security treats them as workers, wives, widows, divorced wives, and mothers.
If you chose to be a homemaker, you are covered under Social Security through your husband’s work. When the family income is reduced because of his retirement, death, or disability, you may qualify for Social Security benefits at age 62, at any age if you have minor children in your care receiving benefits, or as early as age 60 as a widow, or from age 50-59 as a disabled widow. However, if you divorce after less than ten years of marriage, this protection is not available to you.
If you work outside the home, you earn Social Security protection of your own for yourself and your family. If you die or become disabled, your children get benefits until they are 18 or 19 if still in secondary school. Your husband could also qualify for benefits on your earnings.
If you alternate between a career and homemaking, you need to be aware that you can maintain your full Social Security protection with a little attention. Any Social Security credits you earn remain on your record, and after ten years of work in which you have earned the maximum of four credits each year, you are fully insured for retirement, disability, or survivors benefits. But for disability benefits, you also need to have recent work. For example, if you are over 30 years old, you need the maximum amount of credits for five out of the last 10 years (20 credits). Younger workers need less, as little as six credits for a year and a half of work under age 24.
If you qualify for benefits both as a spouse and as a worker, you get the higher of the two. That is, you get your own benefit plus the difference between the two. Whether to take a benefit on your own earnings or a spouse’s benefit may be more complicated that that, however. For example, if you take a widow’s benefit at the earliest possible age, age 60, it is reduced to 71.5 percent of the worker’s benefit. But if you take it at age 65 you get 100 percent of the deceased worker’s benefit.
The important thing is that you recognize the need to stay on top of your Social Security protection. For more information, call Social Security at its toll-free number, 1-800-772-1213. Ask for the booklet “Social Security: What Every Woman Should Know.” You may also call the The Shaw Group at 1-800-668-1979 for more information about Social Security disability benefits and representation in your disability claim.
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Last updated 10/26/05