WOMEN DESERVE MORE SOCIAL SECURITY, NOT LESS MinutemanMedia
by Martha Burk
As we all know from the State of the Union speech, [Bush] is pushing hard - on his own party as well as the Democrats - to privatize Social Security. While some of his folks know carving private accounts out of the present system is a non-starter, they’re still trying to figure a way to please their [pResident] and still get re-elected next year. Representative Bill Thomas, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee and a heavy-hitter in the debate, recently floated the idea of "gender and race adjusting” benefits. Thomas strongly implied that since women live longer than men, their checks should be reduced so an equivalent amount of money would stretch over the additional years.
Great. Women already have lower benefits than men because they make less over their lifetimes due to pay discrimination and years spent out of the workforce caring for kids and elderly parents, so Thomas’ idea adds insult to injury. But putting aside the fact that gender or race-based benefits would be against the law, Thomas ought to consider some “adjustments” that would really be fair to women.
In 2003, the last full year for which we have Census Bureau earnings data for full-time, year-round workers, women earned only 75.5 cents for every $1 men earned. Adjusting women's benefits upward to compensate for that lower pay, would mean an increase in their benefits of 32.5 percent to bring them in line with men's benefits.
Making race based adjustments could help Hispanic and African American women even more. Hispanic women earn only 52.5 cents for each $1 earned by non-Hispanic white men, and African American women earned only 62.5 cents. So Hispanic women would need a 90 percent adjustment and African American women a 60 percent upward adjustment to bring their benefits into line with white men’s.
And, if Rep. Thomas wants to compensate women for the time they spend out of the labor market caring for children and other family members, the upward adjustment would have to be much larger. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research recently estimated that the typical woman earns just 38 cents for each $1.00 the typical man earns over a lifetime, taking years out of the workforce into account. Since Social Security benefits are based on the highest 35 years of earnings (and the years women spend at home are averaged in at $0). To compensate women for the impact of this lost time doing unpaid care work, women's benefits would need to be increased by 163 percent, more than double.
Of course, privatizing Social Security would make all of these inequities worse, not better, since women have fewer pennies to invest in that great casino we call the stock market.
The National Council of Women’s Organizations sent a strongly worded letter to Thomas, urging him and his colleagues get serious about strengthening Social Security in ways that preserve and improve benefits for all those who rely on it, including women. The system is not in crisis, but it will be if it’s starved by taking money out through risky privatization schemes. Congress ought to be working to stop that plan, not proposing ways to further disadvantage women through disproportionate benefit cuts.
Martha Burk is a political psychologist who heads the Center for Advancement of Public Policy in Washington, D.C., a think tank focusing on the wisdom of providing for more equal treatment of women in society. She can be found at MinutemanMedia.org.
