Skip Navigation

The treatment of women under the Social Security system has been a topic of debate since the system began. The controversy is rooted in the multiple roles that many women play and in the multiple objectives of the Social Security program. As more and more women spend substantial portions of their lives in the labor force, the Congress continues to face the challenge of balancing the goal of providing an equitable return on the Social Security taxes married women pay with that of providing adequate benefits for women who have spent part or all of their adult lives outside the paid labor force. Attaining this balance can be complicated; for example, an increase in benefits for couples in which both spouses have been employed for many years would entail either reducing benefits under current law for other recipients or increasing costs for the program as a whole.

After briefly describing the relevant provisions of the Social Security benefit structure, this statement addresses three topics:

• The changing demographic situation, including increased participation in the paid labor force by women and trends in marriage and divorce rates;
  
  
• How these changes are likely to affect the Social Security benefits of women in the future; and
  
  
• The provisions of the Social Security benefit structure that deal with spouses of insured workers when the spouse receives a pension based on earnings not covered by Social Security--the government pension offset.

The last section of this statement is based on a staff memorandum prepared at the request of this Subcommittee, which I would like to include in the record of this hearing.¹

This document is available in its entirety in PDF.

1. Congressional Budget Office, The Government Pension Offset in the Social Security Program," Staff Memorandum (April 1992).