Assignment:
Interesting facts about social security, particularly the statistics about married couples. Social security funds might be in jeopardy so pulling resources and saving is key to sustaining life in the senior years.
Which one of your pros and cons do you find to be most significant to the environment today?
Pro: Married couples have the lowest rate of poverty among Social Security recipients. Often, the combination of private pensions, savings and investments, and Social Security provides adequate income. But the biggest threat of poverty comes after a spouse dies, and the elderly widow is left with a significantly reduced income. It usually costs the survivor about 75 percent as much to live as it cost the married couple. The increase in the survivor's benefit is needed to combat poverty among elderly women.
Con: The combination of trimming spousal benefits, while boosting the survivor benefit, would add to the financial obligations of the Social Security Trust Fund. This would be inadvisable at a time when efforts should be made to cut the long-range deficit of the trust fund.