Knowledge of Social Security: survivor families with young children

This article addresses how well informed survivor family heads are regarding Social Security program provisions that are specifically relevant to them and to their families. Based on responses to 10 questions on benefit provisions, the evaluation finds that among three groups of beneficiaries--widowers, current widows, and remarried widows--widowers were least well informed. Overall, about 23 percent of all widows (compared with only 6 percent of the widowers) were able to correctly respond to 8 or more of the 10 questions. The strongest of the three subject areas of program knowledge--child's benefits, spouse's benefits, and work and earnings provisions--was the child's benefits area. The relative differences between widows and widowers in their knowledge in this area were not as large as in the other two areas. The article concludes that the heads of most survivor beneficiary units were aware of the program provisions they need to know to participate effectively in the program, indicating that this population is well served by the agency information system.