Capital & Main: Surviving on $1,800 a Month in Social Security, She Died Looking for a Place to Live

[valleyrogue]

52. Not very likely. It is most likely a spousal benefit.

I know of a woman who gets $2300 a month in SS, which is way more than my nephew gets, certainly more than I get for working my ass off all my life, and no way did she wait until she was 70 to get it.

She was married and divorced. Divorced women can get a survivor benefit if they have been married more than ten years. This is most likely what the woman in the story got or else widow's benefits. Men on average make substantially more money than women do even now despite all the blather about "glamorous" (read male-dominated) fields women are allegedly going into in great numbers. Men tend to be overpaid because of the concept of the "family wage," which still exists and is key to understanding why women are systematically underpaid. Very, very few women in my generation of the baby boom never married, fewer than 10 percent, and never-married women are the poorest in old age.

Ten cents says she got the benefit through a man.