Historically, women in widowhood in the United States have been vulnerable, with high rates of poverty. However, over the past several decades, their poverty rate has fallen considerably. In this article, we look at why this decline occurred and whether it will continue. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study linked to Social Security administrative earnings and benefit records, we address these questions by exploring three factors that could have contributed to this decline: (1) women’s rising levels of education; (2) their increased attachment to the labor force; and (3) increasing marital selection, reflecting that whereas marriage used to be equally distributed, it is becoming less common among those with lower socioeconomic status. The project decomposes the share of the decline in poverty into contributions by each of these factors and also projects the role of these factors in the future. The results indicate that increases in education and work experience have driven most of the decline in widows’ poverty to date, but that marital selection will likely play a large role in a continuing decline in the future. Still, even after these effects play out, poverty among widows will remain well above that of married women.

中文翻译：

---

什么因素解释了寡妇贫困的下降？

从历史上看，美国守寡的妇女一直处于弱势，贫困率很高。然而，在过去的几十年里，他们的贫困率已经大幅下降。在本文中，我们将研究这种下降的原因以及它是否会继续下去。使用与社会保障行政收入和福利记录相关的健康和退休研究数据，我们通过探索可能导致这种下降的三个因素来解决这些问题：(1) 女性受教育水平的提高；(2) 他们对劳动力的依恋增加；(3) 增加婚姻选择，反映出虽然婚姻过去是平均分配的，但在社会经济地位较低的人中变得越来越少。该项目将贫困减少的份额分解为每个因素的贡献，并预测这些因素在未来的作用。结果表明，教育和工作经验的增加推动了迄今为止寡妇贫困率的大部分下降，但婚姻选择可能会在未来持续下降中发挥重要作用。尽管如此，即使在这些影响发挥作用之后，寡妇的贫困率仍将远高于已婚妇女的贫困率。