Singles Equality | Singles Bill of Rights

September 27, 2025, by Bella DePaulo

We are in the third full week of September and that means that it is National Unmarried and Single Americans Week. The Census Bureau used to issue a press release with relevant facts and figures, but for the past several years, they have not done so. Nonetheless, we will continue to mark the occasion. A very relevant just-published study is worth our attention, showing the importance of recognizing singlism. The study documents a particularly compelling example of how single people are treated unfairly.

How Is This OK?

Suppose all the citizens of a particular nation were required to make regular deposits of their own money into a savings account. They can start using the money in their accounts once they retire. But when they die, only certain people are allowed to give their money to someone else. For the others, when they die, they can’t give their money to anyone; the government gets it. Perhaps, for example, people with blue eyes, but not any other color of eyes, can designate a beneficiary.

That doesn’t happen. It would be ridiculous and indefensible. But something very similar does happen in the US with regard to Social Security. Workers pay into Social Security through payroll taxes and employers match those contributions. Under some conditions, when a worker who has earned Social Security income dies, their benefits can go to children or dependent parents. In the case of people who were married for at least nine months, their benefits go to their surviving spouse. Even an ex-spouse – or a series of them! – may be eligible if they were married for at least 10 years.

In contrast, a person who has never married (and does not have eligible children or a dependent parent) cannot leave their benefits to anyone – and no one can leave benefits to them. Those benefits go back into the system. But they were earned by the never-married people. That money was taken out of their paychecks just as it was for the workers who married. But instead of going to a person designated by the never-married worker, it goes back into the system, where it may be used, for example, to benefit someone’s ex.

It Gets Worse

Social Security greatly disadvantages people who are not married in another way, too, a new study by Deborah Carr of Boston University, Leping Wang of Vanderbilt, and Pamela J. Smock of the University of Michigan has shown. In their paper published in The Gerontologist, “Do Social Security benefits rules perpetuate marital status and gender inequities?”, they show that the amount of Social Security income that unmarried people receive is far less than what married people receive.

Social Security is designed so that married people have a big advantage that never-married people do not have: They can collect benefits based on their own earnings or up to half of the earnings of their spouse – whichever is higher. Never-married people do not have an alternative source of benefits that may be greater than their own. A little more than half of married women today collect their spouse’s benefits because those benefits are greater than their own, Carr and her colleagues report.

There is another way in which never married men are unfairly penalized. Social Security benefits are based on lifetime earnings. But single men are paid less than married men, not because they are less deserving but because they are targets of discrimination. In a controlled experiment, employers were shown resumes that were identical except that in one, the applicant was described as a married man, and in the other, as a single man. The employers who saw the resumes from a married man were more likely to want to interview him and pay him more.

In addition to documenting the disparities in Social Security income, Professor Carr and her colleagues also looked at overall household income, to see whether unmarried people made up for their lower Social Security benefits with other sources of income. They also looked at the potential implications of their lower benefits by examining poverty levels.

The analyses were based on data from 5,269 Wisconsinites born in 1939. Married people were compared to never-married people, remarried people, people divorced from a marriage lasting less than 10 years, people divorced from a marriage lasting 10 years or longer, people widowed before the age of 65, and people widowed at or after 65.

Social Security Income: Married People Get about $1,000 More Per Month Than Never Married People

For the married men in the study, their annual income from Social Security was $32,349. For never married men, it was $19,434. That means that unmarried men are only getting 60 percent of the income that married men are getting. Married men are getting $12,915 more per year than never married men, or more than $1,000 per month.

The remarried men earned a bit less than the men in their first marriage, $30,043. The various categories of divorced and widowed men earned between $22,109 and $23,318 – all higher than the $19,434 income of the never-married men.

For the women, the results were similar. Married women received $30,439 in annual Social Security income. Never-married women received just 63 percent of that — $19,224. The difference of $11,214 amounts to a monthly advantage of more than $900 for the married women.

Like the men, the remarried women received a little less in annual Social Security income than the women in their first marriage, $30,314 vs. $30,439. But for the women, the income of the never-married was not the lowest. Divorced women who had been married 10 years or more had an annual Social Security income of only $16,979 (compared to $19,224 for the never-married women). Divorced women whose longest marriage was less than 10 years received $18,223.

Total Household Income: Married People Have Much More

Social Security is not the only income potentially available to older people in the US. Some may also have wages, salary, private pensions, and other sources of income. Theoretically, people who are not married could make up with other income what they lose in Social Security. But that’s not what happens.

The total household income of never married men is only about half of the income of married men, $42,041 vs $83,394. Remarried men have even more, $85,810. The various categories of divorced and widowed men all have lower total income than the married men – between $54,113 and $66,146 – but more than the never married men ($42,041).

For the women, the married are again substantially advantaged. The never married women have total household incomes that are only about 60 percent of what married women have — $40,164 compared to $66,428, a difference of $26,264. The remarried women have even greater household incomes than the women in their first marriage, $78,007 vs. $66,428. The various categories of divorced and widowed women have total household incomes ranging from $42,176 to $47,456 – all higher than the $40,164 of the never married women.

Poverty: Married People Are Less Likely to Be Impoverished

Never-married men were about four times as likely to be living in poverty than married men, 15.9 percent compared to 4 percent. The divorced men were about twice as likely to be impoverished than the married men, 8.2 percent vs. 4 percent. Widowed men were better off if they were widowed before the age of 65 than after: 4.5 percent living in poverty vs. 7.4 percent.

Among the women, the never married are about twice as likely to be living in poverty than the married women, 15.8 percent vs. 7.6 percent. The highest rate of impoverishment for women, though, is for those who were divorced from a marriage lasting 10 years or longer. At 20.8 percent, their likelihood of living in poverty was even greater than that of the never married men (15.9 percent).

Men Do Better Than Women – with One Exception

For every marital status except one, men were better off than women. They got more Social Security income than women, they had higher total household incomes, and they are less likely to be living in poverty. The one exception was the group of never married people – the men and women fared very similarly in all three ways.

The social scientists suggest that there were no differences for the never-married group because this cohort, born in 1939, were unlikely to have children. Among the married or previously married, most did have children, and the women were likely to have been disadvantaged by the time they spent away from the workplace caring for them.

What the Research Does and Does Not Mean

If you are a retirement-age person who has never been married, what difference might it make in your life to have about an extra $1,000 every month for the rest of your life? That’s the average additional amount in Social Security benefits that married people get. That money could buy better housing, better healthcare, better nutrition, or other components of a good life. When single people are happy, healthy, and flourishing, that’s especially impressive because they are typically at quite a disadvantage financially.

The word “typically” is important. The findings from social science studies are averages, based on all the participants. That means that there are always exceptions. Some never married men and women will do better than the average married man or woman, for example.

The results from this study are about just one aspect of financial life, though a very important one – the amount of income people receive. When I talked to people who are single at heart about what they love about their single lives, freedom is always mentioned. That includes the freedom to decide what to do with their money – what to spend it on, for example, and how much to save. They also appreciate not being vulnerable to any potential financial recklessness or debts of a partner.

[Notes: (1) The opinions expressed here do not represent the official positions of Unmarried Equality. (2) I’ll post all these blog posts at the UE Facebook page; please join our discussions there. (3) Disclosure: Links to books may include affiliate links. (4) A shorter version of this article will be cross-posted at the Living Single blog at Psychology Today, with the permission of UE. (5)  For links to previous columns, click here.]

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash