Earnings sharing - time for a serious look

[National Dialogue Moderator <moderator>]

Darcy Olsen's paper advocates earnings sharing.  This is a method for 
sharing the contributions to private accounts between spouses.  It 
would allocate more money to a lower earner in a couple and less to 
the higher earner.  

As an idea, it has some advantages:

1. It would allow women to get the benefit for years of work and years 
of married caregiving, with caregiving years available based on a 
split of the couple's earnings

2. It would offer something to divorced women regardless of period of 
marriage

3. It may well offer greater equity between single and dual earner 
couples, but this would need to be studies

It also has some disadvantages:

1. This method would not work well for determining disability benefits 
- two sets of earnings records would be needed

2. The same thing is true for pre-retirement survivor benefits

3. It could serve as a disincentive to marriage, and this would make a 
nonworking partner in an unmarried couple a serious loser

4. It would be politically difficult to see because there would be 
many losers

This idea has been around for a long time, and it has both advantages 
and disadvantages.  It is time for a serious evaluation of earnings 
sharing so that we can have a better understanding of its pros and 
cons.  Any focus on women and social security without some 
consideration of this issue is incomplete.

Anna Rappaport