Surviving spouses face 63% income drop, study finds

When one spouse dies, the financial structure that supported a household for decades can shift dramatically and a new study puts hard numbers to that reality.

Research published this week by Cincinnati-based insurance and financial services company Western & Southern Financial Group, analyzed U.S. Census Bureau microdata covering 848,702 households headed by someone aged 50 or older.

The study found that surviving-spouse households have a median income of $40,800, compared with $111,000 for married-couple households in the same age bracket, a gap of 63 percent.

The analysis, based on the 2024 American Community Survey accessed through IPUMS USA at the University of Minnesota, did not track individual households before and after the loss of a spouse. Rather, it compared two distinct groups at a single point in time, representing approximately 35 million married-couple households and 11.4 million surviving-spouse households nationwide.

A gap that holds across every life stage

The income disparity between married couples and surviving spouses is not confined to any single decade of later life.

Western & Southern found that the gap ranged from 52 to 59 percent across all age groups beginning at 50, with the widest difference appearing among households in their 50s and narrowing modestly among the oldest cohorts.

Two structural forces help explain the scale of the decline. First, in the typical married-couple household headed by someone aged 50 or older, the higher-earning spouse accounts for approximately 68 percent of household income, according to Census microdata cited in the report.

When that earner dies, a significant portion of the household's income base disappears immediately. Second, Social Security data from the Social Security Administration's 2026 cost-of-living adjustment fact sheet show that benefits for an aged surviving spouse are 40 percent lower than those paid to an aged couple – a built-in structural reduction that compounds the income loss.

For advisors, this is familiar territory. InvestmentNews has covered how Social Security survivor benefit strategies can meaningfully affect long-term income for widowed clients, and the complexity around benefit sequencing remains one of the most consequential decisions a surviving spouse faces.

Where the gap is widest

Western & Southern ranked all 50 states by the percentage difference in median income between married-couple and surviving-spouse households headed by someone aged 55 or older, drawing on the 2020–2024 American Community Survey five-year sample.

Massachusetts recorded the widest gap, with surviving-spouse households earning 68 percent less than married-couple households – a difference of $91,851 annually. Connecticut (66 percent), New York (65 percent), and Rhode Island (65 percent) followed closely.

At the other end of the spectrum, Hawaii posted the narrowest gap at 49 percent, while West Virginia had the smallest dollar-value difference at $46,884 per year.

These state-level disparities reflect divergent costs of living, housing markets, and earnings structures, and carry meaningful implications for advisors working with clients in high-income metropolitan areas where the financial drop at widowhood can be most severe.

Women carry a disproportionate share of the risk

Women head 76 percent of surviving-spouse households among those aged 50 and older, according to the report. And within that group, widows fare worse than widowers: median household income for widowers is $48,600, or 56 percent below married couples, while widows have a median income of $38,900 – 65 percent below the married-couple benchmark.

That gap between widows and widowers persists across every age cohort in the sample. Among those in their 50s, widowers had a median income of $68,041 compared with $57,010 for widows. At age 80 and older, widowers reported $43,200 versus $32,800 for widows – a $10,400 difference that points to compounding disadvantages over time.

The income risk for widows is not news to the profession. As InvestmentNews has reported, Social Security's complexity around survivor benefits has led to systematic underpayment of widows and widowers, with an internal audit estimating that more than 15,000 retirement beneficiaries were owed an estimated $193.8 million in unclaimed survivor benefits as of September 2019. Ensuring clients claim correctly is a foundational planning step.

A planning lens advisors can act on

The data in the Western & Southern report are comparative rather than causal – they describe the income difference between two groups, not the precise income loss any individual client will experience. But the structural patterns they surface are instructive for practice planning.

Advisors who work primarily with married couples are, by definition, also working with future surviving spouses. Planning conversations that address life insurance coverage, joint-and-survivor annuity options, and Social Security claiming sequences – well before a spouse's death – can meaningfully reduce the income shock the data describe.

Comprehensive retirement income planning for women remains one of the clearest opportunities for advisors to add measurable value, particularly in states where the dollar gap between married-couple and surviving-spouse income is widest.