A brief from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has good news and bad news for women. (Photo: Shutterstock)
The poverty rate for widows has dropped “sharply” since the mid-1990s, but that doesn't mean that widows are facing the same level of risk for poverty as married women.
That's according to a brief from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, which finds that although several factors have combined to lower widows' risk of poverty, they still face a future scenario in which poverty is more likely for them than for their married sisters.
The brief points out that widows have historically suffered from higher poverty rates than have married women. Between 1994 and 2014, however, that rate fell substantially, although it has by no means disappeared. In fact, it says, widows' poverty declined from 19.9 percent in 1994 to 13.2 percent in 2014.
Factors including higher levels of education for women as well as longer periods in the workplace—by 2014, the report says, widows ages 65-85 had an extra year and a half of education and more than 10 years of additional work experience, on average, compared to their counterparts in 1994—helped to reduce the likelihood that they'd face poverty at widowhood. In fact, the projected poverty rate of 13.7 percent for widows in 2014 did not take into account the influence of education and longer careers—the two factors that drove down the poverty rate.
Using just those two factors, the report projects a poverty rate for widows of 10.9 percent in 2029.
In addition, says the report, “the composition of married women has shifted,” with a decline in marriage and an increased likelihood that women who face widowhood are among the better educated—especially since the rise in the divorce rate among less-educated women is “somewhat larger” than for their better-educated sisters.
And while the marriage factor appeared too late to have much of an effect on the period 1994–2014, it's expected to play a larger role in projecting the effect of widowhood on poverty between now and 2029, with all three factors combining to predict a poverty rate of 8.3 percent.
And while it's good news that the poverty rate of widows is expected to continue to decline, the fact remains that widows face a greater risk of poverty than do married women.
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Marlene Satter
Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.
