One of the most important concerns in the current debate over the future of Social Security is how American women will be affected.

Historically, when Social Security has experienced looming cash shortfalls and a debate ensues, women are the targeted audience. Typically, emotion-laden messages threaten that any structural changes to the program will increase poverty among our precious elderly women.

Looming ahead of us now are the largest cash shortfalls in the program’s history. And, as we enter the debate this time, a few facts are undisputed by all sides:

• American women are still more likely to live in poverty during their retirement years than are men.
• Women are also comparatively more likely to rely on Social Security to provide the majority of their retirement income.
• Social Security’s future cash shortfalls pose a heightened and disproportionate threat to women’s retirement security.

Interestingly, it is these undisputed facts on which all sides agree that lead to vastly different solutions. Anti-reform advocates say that because women are so dependent on Social Security, we must maintain the existing system and “tweak” the system to fund promised benefits—to introduce an element of private investment will put women at greater risk of poverty. On the other hand, advocates of structural reform with private ownership say that the existing system threatens women because it is unsustainable, that reliance on the political system is too risky, and that pre-funding retirement with private investment is the only way to create real security in retirement. Far lesser known facts are:

• A low-wage worker who has worked 30 years and retires on Social Security, will receive a benefit that will still keep him/her living below the poverty line.
• Social Security’s existing benefit structure is biased against married couples in which both spouses work. This is because the current system often treats married couples with the same total earnings differently by granting smaller benefits to those couples in which both spouses work and larger benefits to single earner couples.
• Social Security’s benefit structure is biased against women who divorce after less than ten years of marriage. These women are denied the “spousal benefit” that is granted to women whose marriages last ten years or more. (more)

Critics’ Statements About Personal Retirement Accounts:

Critics of Personal Retirement Accounts oppose them even if they are made voluntary, allowing women to choose for themselves if they want to continue to put all of their Social Security taxes into the existing system, or divert a portion of them into a PRA. Some of these critics are actively attacking reform plans with absurd and misleading statements such as that made recently from former Congresswoman Barbara Kennelly, President of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, “President Bush wants to dismantle Social Security…at the expense of ordinary working Americans.”

A New Force: Women for a Social Security Choice:

But now, Women for a Social Security Choice (WSSC) enters the debate with strong, powerful non-partisan voices. Armed with the truth and a cadre of women experts from across the country, WSSC is educating the media, the Congress, and the private sector about the need for reform and how women—indeed all workers—can reap the benefits of personal retirement accounts. The WSSC mission is to tell women the truth—the whole truth--and become true advocates for women’s intelligence and ability to make their own choices!

Women for a Social Security Choice advocates:

• Maintaining the existing system, but raising even more of our elderly out of poverty by increasing the minimum benefit paid to low wage workers to 120% of poverty.*
• Allowing younger workers to create Personal Retirement Accounts—individually owned and controlled – and accepting a proportional reduction in their benefit from Social Security, but still maintaining a significant benefit from Social Security.

* The SSA Office of the Chief Actuary said that if this were implemented today, more than half of million current retirees would be raise out of poverty. Private letter communication, February 2002.