Survivorship benefit is a feature of most public pension systems. In the United States a widow can receive Social Security benefits following the death of her husband even though she may not have made contributions to the Social Security system during her lifetime. Such a benefit is based on her deceased husband's record of contributions to the Social Security system. The survivor's Social Security benefit is determined by a complex set of rules. A 33 percent reduction in the prior couple's benefit is typical. There is no reason, however, to believe that this reduction is optimal. It is not based on a theoretical principle or on empirical findings. We consider in this paper how changes in U. S. Social Security survivorship benefits might be expected to change the income and poverty rate of surviving spouses and of prior couples. We focus on widow's because they comprise more than three-fourths of elderly nonmarried persons in the U.S.

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