How effective is redistribution under the Social Security benefit formula?

This paper uses earnings histories obtained from the Social Security Administration and linked to the survey responses for participants in the Health and Retirement Study to investigate redistribution under the current social security benefit formula. We find that as advertised, at the level of the individual respondent, the benefit formula is progressive. When individuals are arrayed by indexed lifetime earnings, own benefits are significantly redistributed from those with high lifetime earnings to those with low lifetime earnings. However, much of this apparent redistribution is from men to women, and when examined at the level of the family, from primary to secondary earners. When families are arrayed according the total lifetime earnings, and spouse and survivor benefits are taken into account, the extent of redistribution from families with high lifetime earnings to families with low lifetime earnings is roughly halved. Much of the remaining redistribution is from families where both spouses spend much of their potential work lives in the labor market, to families where a spouse, often with high earnings potential, chooses to spend a significant number of years outside of the