How Social Security Helps Married People More Than Singles

"Social Security is designed so that married people have a big advantage that never-married people do not have: They can collect benefits based on their own earnings or up to half of the earnings of their spouse, whichever is higher. Never-married people do not have an alternative source of benefits that may be greater than their own. A little more than half of married women today collect their spouse's benefits because those benefits are greater than their own, Carr and her colleagues report."

"But single men are paid less than married men, not because they are less deserving but because they are targets of discrimination. In a controlled experiment, employers were shown résumés that were identical except that in one the applicant was described as a married man, and in the other, as a single man. The employers who saw résumés from a married man were more likely to want to interview him and pay him more."

Social Security is among the most successful federal programs in modern U.S. history. Social Security benefit rules give married people an advantage by allowing them to collect benefits based on their own earnings or up to half of a spouse's earnings, whichever is higher. Never-married people lack that alternative and receive substantially less Social Security income. Women typically receive lower benefits than men, and a little more than half of married women collect their spouse's higher benefit. Analyses compared household income to determine whether unmarried people compensated with other income sources and examined implications of lower benefits.

Read at Psychology Today