While Social Security once did provide better for family caregivers—usually women—via the spousal benefit, that's no longer the case.

According to a new brief from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, not only are fewer women married—either they never wed, or they divorced before the 10 years necessary to qualify for a spousal benefit—their own worker benefit is more likely to be larger, making it less likely that they'd even collect a spousal benefit.

But they're still losing time from the workforce for childrearing and/or caring for family members, and that means wages lost that could have boosted their own worker benefit.

As a result, the report says, some policy experts are suggesting that Social Security add wage credits that would increase a caregiver's earnings record and thereby raise retirement benefits—something that's done in other developed countries.

Not only do unmarried women account for a third of households aged 65–69 and two thirds of households aged 85 and older, many court poverty thanks to caregiving interruptions weighing on pay and work records.

One study, the report notes, “found that women ages 65–74 who spent at least 10 years as a single mother were 55 percent more likely to be poor than continuously married mothers of similar education and ethnicity.”

While caregiving programs in other countries vary because of differing objectives, the study looked at programs in the U.K., Sweden and Germany. In Germany and the U.K., caregiver credits are offered for taking care of elderly or ill relatives as well as children, while Sweden confines them to those who take care of children—but in Sweden parents must also have work credits.

In the U.S., it's been suggested that the number of work years excluded from determining benefits be increased, and credits be provided to parents with a child under age six for up to five years. The former would cost relatively little, while the latter would “have a more significant cost.”

The report points out that childcare credits were found in a couple of studies to have modest effects, but would be most helpful to women at the bottom of the lifetime earnings distribution, and in another were found to “be more effective than either current spousal benefits or dropout years at reducing poverty for low-income groups and minorities.”

Costs, the report concludes, could be covered by reducing benefits somewhat for higher earners.

Instant Insights /

Social Security and caregiver credits: An idea whose time has come?

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