What Factors Explain the Decline in Widowed Women's Poverty?

Historically, women in widowhood in the United States have been vulnerable, with high rates of poverty. However, over the past several decades, their poverty rate has fallen considerably. In this article, we look at why this decline occurred and whether it will continue. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study linked to Social Security administrative earnings and benefit records, we address these questions by exploring three factors that could have contributed to this decline: (1) women's rising levels of education; (2) their increased attachment to the labor force; and (3) increasing marital selection, reflecting that whereas marriage used to be equally distributed, it is becoming less common among those with lower socioeconomic status. The project decomposes the share of the decline in poverty into contributions by each of these factors and also projects the role of these factors in the future. The results indicate that increases in education and work experience have driven most of the decline in widows' poverty to date, but that marital selection will likely play a large role in a continuing decline in the future. Still, even after these effects play out, poverty among widows will remain well above that of married women.

Older and wiser? An affective science perspective on age-related challenges in financial decision making.

Financial planning decisionss are fundamentally affective in nature; they are decisions related to money, longevity and quality of life. Over the next several decades people will be increasingly responsible for managing their own assets and investments, and they will be subject to the affective influences on active, personal decision-making. Many of these crucial decisions are made and revised across the lifespan, including when to buy or sell a home, how to save for childrens' education, how to manage healthcare costs, when to retire, how much to save for retirement and how to allocate retirement funds. As average life expectancy increases, many retirees will be faced with inadequate savings to live comfortably until the end of their lives. In the current article, we examine the problems of and potential solutions to inadequate financial planning through the lens of affective science, with an emphasis on how brain-based changes in affective processing with age might contribute to the challenge of financial planning.