First Things First: How Social Security Reform Can Eliminate Elderly Poverty

First Things First: How Social Security Reform Can Eliminate Elderly Poverty. Urban Institute.  C. Eugene Steuerle, Karen E. Smith. March 4, 2021

In this brief, we examine how Social Security proposals could eliminate poverty and relative poverty (defined as having low income relative to average wages in the economy) for older adults and people who receive Social Security Disability Insurance benefits. We add a basic minimum benefit to three prominent Social Security proposals that as currently designed would increase or maintain relative poverty over time.  The additional cost is moderate enough that any of these proposals could be adjusted to virtually eliminate poverty and still provide significantly higher real benefits across the board for future generations of retirees and disabled workers. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

[PDF format, 28 pages].

Women Are Better than Men at Paying Their Mortgages

Women Are Better than Men at Paying Their Mortgages. Urban Institute. Laurie Goodman et al. September 6, 2016.

Female-only borrowers pay more for their mortgages than male-only borrowers, because they have weaker credit characteristics and a higher percentage of those loans are subprime. Our analysis shows, however, that these weaker credit characteristics do not accurately predict how well women pay their mortgages. Instead, female-only borrowers are doing a better job of paying their mortgages than their credit characteristics predict.This is particularly important because more than one-third of female-only borrowers are minorities and almost half of them live in low-income communities. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

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