Measuring the well-being of older women: The transition from wife to widow

The old refrain "His problem ain't so much what he don't know, but what he does that just ain't so" is an apt description of the public perception of poverty in old age. Thanks in large part to dramatic increases in social security benefits and in the incidence and size of private pension benefits, older Americans are now no more prone to suffer from inadequate income than are any other age groups.' This increase in the relative well-being of the elderly is not equally distributed, however. Cross-sectional data show a persistent and dramatic difference in poverty rates between older couples and widows, suggesting that widowhood itself substantially increases the risk of being poor.2 But even this perception of reality held by more sophisticated observers of the elderly "ain't quite so."