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OWL

THE VOICE OF MIDLIFE AND OLDER WOMEN

666 11TH STREET, NW, SUITE 700
WASHINGTON, DC 20001
202-783-6686
FAX 202-638-2356

OWL is the only national grassroots membership organization to focus solely on issues unique to women as they age. OWL believes in keeping Social Security solvent. We welcome this discussion of a full range of options to strengthen Social Security because it is the foundation of women's retirement security.

Any effort to strengthen Social Security must be analyzed for its impact on women. If Social Security works well for women, providing them with adequate and guaranteed benefits, it will work for everybody. Because of their work and life patterns, women rely on Social Security for a greater share of their retirement income than men. Until the structural barriers that prohibit women from achieving retirement income parity with men are removed, we must maintain and strengthen the core of most women's retirement income, Social Security.

Women have a unique stake in this debate:

  • At age 65, women comprise 60 percent of all Social Security beneficiaries, but by age 85, they are 72 percent of all recipients. The fastest growing cohort of population is women over the age of 85.

  • Women earn, on average, only 74 percent of what men do. That means, for an average-waged job, they have $250,000 less in lifetime earnings at retirement than their male counterparts. They are almost twice as likely to be living in poverty as older men. Social Security represents 90 percent of income for 27 percent of older women; for 20 percent Social Security is their sole source of income.

  • The average woman spends a median 11.5 years out of the workforce, usually caregiving for children, elderly family members, or ailing spouses. Those are years she is not paying in to Social Security, vesting in a pension, or saving in any other way for her retirement. Women are being punished in retirement for taking responsibility for their families during their prime earning years. The flexible work that allows women to be caregivers is usually low-waged, with few benefits, and because they stay in jobs an average of 3.5 years, it is difficult for them to vest in pensions, as most plans vest only after five years. Only 14 percent of women over 65 receive any income from pensions.

  • Women live an average of six years longer than men. Life expectancy at age 65 is currently 19.2 years for women compared to 15.6 years for men. Women have smaller retirement incomes which must last for a longer period of time. Women are three times more likely to be widowed than men. Four out of five women in the 85 plus age group are widowed. As widows women are five times more likely to be poor than women who are in couple.

OWL's principles for assessing any proposed Social Security reform to insure that it will work for women are:

  1. Social Security must remain an earned right. Social Security is an integral component of the social insurance compact that America has made with its citizens, and must always provide equitable coverage for those who have paid for it.

  2. Social Security should be an equitable program. Women, people with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, low and moderate income working people, and families must all be treated in way that will provide fair and equal outcomes today and in the future.

  3. Social Security should be genuinely gender-neutral in its outcomes. The specific inequities faced by women, caused by their traditional employment histories and life patterns, must be specifically addressed so that women of future generations will, when they retire, receive all the benefits to which they are entitled.

  4. Social Security should provide adequacy-maintaining benefit levels for all recipients. Any proposed benefit cuts implemented in efforts to maintain the program's solvency would disproportionately harm women and minorities; temporary, seasonal and part time workers; and the chronically under- and unemployed.

  5. All existing and new revenue sources must be explored before any changes in Social Security's structure are undertaken to assure its future solvency. Modification of existing program fundamentals, such as the calculations of cost-of- living increases through the Consumer Price Index, changes in the retirement age, and raising the floor for the taxation of benefits; as well as ideas such as income caps, earnings sharing, taxation of unearned income, shifts in the allocation of spousal and survivor benefits, and the use of general revenues, must be carefully analyzed for their consequences for women, and their distributional impact generally, before any radical changes that could destroy the foundation of the program are proposed.

  6. Social Security must keep Americans secure. No changes should affect current recipients. There should be no ex post facto effects of legislation on current recipients.

  7. Major changes in Social Security must not be made in isolation. Any changes in benefits and/or revenues must be considered in the context of projected changes in Medicare, Medicaid, private retirement benefits and other aspects of the government's social insurance programs that have a profound impact on women's lives.

  8. Information on the impact of Social Security reform must be provided to the public by the Social Security Administration. Adequate funding should be provided for comprehensive public education about Social Security and any changes being proposed. The distributional and other effects of structural reform and other proposed policy options for Social Security and other programs administered by the Social Security Administration must be analyzed and made publicly available.

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