Not Just Your Mother's Retirement Program

Social Security is particularly important for women, providing the foundation for women's retirement security. As a result, the privatization of Social Security threatens to exert an especially detrimental impact on the lives of women.

Women represent a majority of Social Security recipients. In fact, according to the Social Security Administration, women comprise 58 percent of all Social Security beneficiaries age 62 and older and approximately 71 percent of all beneficiaries age 85 and older.

Women depend on Social Security as a source of retirement income even more than men do. In fact, nearly two-thirds of women age 65 and over receive a majority of their income from Social Security, and nearly one-third rely on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income. According to the National Women's Law Center, without Social Security, over half of all elderly women would be living in poverty. In fact, according to the National Organization for Women, around 7 million elderly women a year escape poverty with the help of their monthly Social Security benefits.

Elderly women are still less likely than elderly men to receive income from pensions other than Social Security, making Social Security all the more essential. Furthermore, women still receive lower pension benefits on average due to their comparatively lower pre-retirement earnings as well as the fact that women take more time out of the labor force to care for children and other family members. In fact, only one-quarter of women age 65 or older receive pension benefits compared to nearly half of men, and the median amount of women's pension income is only half that of men's. However, Social Security represents a progressive system of benefits, in that lower-wage earners receive a higher percentage of benefits than do higher-wage earners. Conversely, according to Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women and Families, a privatized system would unfairly privilege high-wage earners at the expense of lower-wage earners, mainly women.

According to the National Women's Law Center, 94 percent of adults who receive benefits as the relative of a retired, disabled, or deceased worker are women. Furthermore, 98 percent of recipients obtaining benefits as a surviving spouse are women. For never married, divorced, and widowed women of retirement age, Social Security comprises an average of 52 percent of their income, compared to the average 38 percent of retirement income for unmarried men.

As a consequence of women's longer life expectancy compared to that of men, women can expect to spend more years in retirement. Therefore, women have a higher chance of exhausting other forms of income, placing a greater reliance upon Social Security's vital income provisions. Furthermore, unlike some other programs that threaten to run out during the course of the recipient's retirement, Social Security provides guaranteed, predictable benefits that cannot be outlived. Privatization would eliminate the lifetime guarantee of benefits so that when a personal account runs out of funds over the course of the recipient's retirement, the money is gone for good. In addition, given women's longer life spans, the fact that Social Security benefits are adjusted yearly to keep up with inflation is particularly important. Given the greater average number of years women spend in retirement, defending Social Security for its guaranteed provision of reliable benefits represents a particularly important concern for women.

Social Security benefits serve as an especially important source of income for women of color. Women of color are less likely than European American women and men of any race to receive pension income at retirement. Women of color are also more vulnerable to becoming disabled during their working lives, making Social Security's disability benefits particularly crucial.

Private accounts cannot duplicate the special protections Social Security affords women. More than just another workers' retirement program, Social Security is a social insurance program that keeps millions of women and their families out of poverty. This vital program must be protected and defended.