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Report
Information Spillovers Within Couples: Evidence from a Sequential Survey of Spouses
Little is known about the extent and drivers of information flow within couples and whether spouses hold aligned expectations about the same outcomes. To provide new evidence, we conduct an online survey of 2,200 middle-aged married couples in the U.S. Our focus is on expectations about Social Security benefits. We first document misalignment in expectations: the correlation between partners’ beliefs about a given spouse’s Social Security benefits is 0.70, well below full agreement. We also show that this imperfect alignment is systematically associated with couple-specific ...
Newsletter
Financial Life After the Death of a Spouse
The death of a spouse results in a considerable decline in average income for the surviving spouse. The Social Security survivors benefits program compensates the surviving spouse, most often a woman, for almost all of the lost income, allowing them to work less, but many widows who are not yet eligible for the program struggle to meet their financial needs.