The Economic Consequences of a Husband's Death: Evidence from the HRS and AHEAD

Abstract

Summary Households headed by elderly women still experience substantially higher rates of poverty than do other households. In this article, we use longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study to examine why widowed women are so much more likely than married women to have poor economic status, when they themselves were once married. We examine whether high rates of poverty are due to income lost upon a husband’s death, to depletion of assets, or to selection effects. Although we find that widowhood does increase the incidence of poverty among women who were not poor when married, the substantial number of widows in poverty reflects poor economic status that continued from marriage to widowhood. Poor women are more likely to become widowed at a young age, because of the relationship between mortality and socioeconomic status. The findings in this article provide a