How Social Security Benefits Are Important to Women

How Social Security Benefits Are Important to Women Social security disability determination is based on a chart review and other formalities. Read about how social security benefits are important to women.

Social security disability benefits are a major lifeline for disabled Americans, and the SSA (Social Security Administration) determines the claimant’s eligibility through a detailed chart review. It is estimated that nearly one out of every six working Americans has a disability and those with disabilities face more economic hardship compared to those without a disability. In this article, we will look at what women need to know about social security retirement and disability benefits.

More women work now, pay taxes to social security and earn credits towards monthly retirement income. However, retirement brings significant challenges to women because of the following reasons. 

Women typically live longer than men. Statistics show that a 65-year-old woman can expect to live, on average, until age 87 whereas a man of the same age can expect to live, on average, until about age 84.

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Women usually have lower lifetime earnings than men.

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Women may reach retirement with smaller pensions and assets than men.

As a provider of medical review solutions to disability attorneys, we are aware that SSDI or social security disability insurance enables families to survive during their challenging period. In the 1990s men outnumbered women by a 2-to-1 ratio in the receipt of disabled worker benefits. At present, women make up around 48% of disabled worker beneficiaries. Also, more than 2 million spouses and children of disabled workers also receive disability insurance benefits. 

At present, the number of men and women getting SSDI is almost the same. Women are present in larger numbers in the paid labor force and are insured for disability benefits nearly on par with men. Women who are insured for disability benefits are as likely as men to receive them.

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Increasingly more women have earned SSDI protection because of their work: To qualify for disability insurance, claimants must have a severely

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disabling condition that can be established through a review of their medical records, usually performed with the support of medical records services. Unlike earlier, more women are in the paid workforce now and do qualify for the benefits. Women’s participation in the labor force has kept increasing from the 1990s into the 2000s. The risk of disability is more for older workers. 70% of SSDI awards go to people fifty years of age or older, and half go to those 55 years or older. Earlier, women didn’t have a strong and recent work record and were not eligible for SSDI. Though women are even now less likely to qualify for SSDI, the gap has narrowed. Now women past their mid-30s are about 90% as likely as men to meet SSDI’s insurance criteria, compared to the situation in 1980. 

Women receive lower SSDI benefits than men: A 2017 study showed that the average woman disabled worker received at least 20% (in the “eighties and ‘nineties it was around 30%) lesser than the amount a disabled male worker received. Now the gap has narrowed but still not completely disappeared.

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Gender differences in health status and disability are apparent in SSDI as well: Though men and women experience the same afflictions, there are differences. Compared to men, women mostly qualify based on a mental or musculoskeletal impairment. Women are more likely to have cancer but less likely to have experienced a disastrous injury. Women receiving SSDI typically have lower mortality rates than their male counterparts. The mortality advantage women have results in longer stays on SSDI, which boosts women’s share of the program.

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Older women are more dependent on social security retirement benefits than older men: Women who are already retired may be less likely to have their own pension, but younger women in the workforce are as likely as men to enroll in a pension plan. However, with lower lifetime earnings and longer lifespans, women may exhaust their retirement savings soon.

Therefore, women tend to rely more heavily on social security retirement income.

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Women tend to benefit more from spousal and survivorship benefits: Wives typically earn less than their husbands and tend to outlive their

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partners. Spousal and survivorship benefits often turn out to be more generous for wives because of differences in the lifetime earnings of women and men, which results in an average spousal benefit for women that is around one-third higher than that for men.

Social security benefit programs have transformed from a predominantly male program to one that is approximately half female. Both SSDI and social security retirement income are important elements of financial security for women workers and their dependents. In the event of a disability or injury, women benefit as much as men from the protection offered by Social Security. Careful planning is essential to receive the maximum benefits, and this can be done with the support of a social security lawyer. A dedicated lawyer will take care of all aspects including medical record retrieval and review for disability applications, timely filing of the claim, and other formalities.

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