Married Women Lost Most of Their Retirement Income Edge: Study

The Paper

The economists used data from the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study survey program, from 1992 through 2020, to get information about the wealth level of women in the three different marital status categories during a key pre-retirement period: when the women were ages 59 through 60.

The economists looked at several retirement preparedness indicators, including the “income replacement rate,” or the percentage of pre-retirement earnings that a household’s retirement nest egg can replace.

The economists included the value of the husbands’ income and assets, and a couple’s Social Security benefits, in the calculations, but not the value of any home, because of a belief that most older women try to avoid tapping the value of their homes.

The Results

The economists depended on extra projections to calculate the late boomer women’s income replacement rate, because only boomers born before 1960 had reached age 60 by the beginning of 2020.

Here’s how projected median pre-retirement income replacement rate estimates compare for the 1942-1947 war babies and the 1954-1959 mid boomers:

Never married women: Increased to 34% for the mid boomers, from 24% for the war babies.
Mostly single women: Fell to 33% for the mid boomers, from 36% for the war babies.
Mostly married women: Fell to 38% for the mid boomers, from 47% from the war babies.

Munnell’s team believes that the numbers will look about the same for late boomers who were never married, or mostly single, but even worse for the late boomers who were mostly married.

The team predicts that the median income replacement rates will continue to be 34% for never married late boomers, and 33% for mostly single late boomers, but fall further, to 35%, for the late boomers who have been mostly married.

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