by Bruce Pilgrim

Created on: June 22, 2007

No. If nothing else, it's about survivors.

The overwhelming majority of people collecting Social Security benefits today include two main groups;

1. Retired workers who have paid into the Social Security System their entire working lives.

2. Survivors; widows, widowers, and children of deceased breadwinners.

Virtually every discussion on Social Security focuses exclusively on the first group noted above. And, while I am absolutely certain that such folks earned and deserve their benefits, I know from personal experience about the second group.

My father died when I was ten years old. My mother faced the prospect of supporting myself and my two older brothers. Without the Social Security survivors' checks my mom received, we never would have made it. Those checks, while not nearly enough to live on, provided supplemental support for each of us until we each reached age 18.

Unless you have lived through such an experience it is difficult to imagine. Dads or Moms aren't supposed to die while their kids are young. But they do.

If you died young and your spouse was left with children to raise, wouldn't you want your spouse to receive some help from Social Security?

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