1 How You Earn Benefits

You are eligible for a Social Security retirement benefit once you have earned 40 credits, which for most people is after they have worked and contributed to the system for 10 years. Ultimately, your benefit is based on your earnings over 40 work years. For each year you don’t work in that 40-year period, a zero is entered into the calculation. The lowest five years of your earnings are dropped, and retirement benefit amounts are based on your income averaged over 35 years. Since Social Security first arrived on the scene (more than 70 years ago) millions of women have not qualified for their own benefit as retired workers because they didn’t work enough years. For women who have qualified, their benefits have been low due to the number of years they spent out of the workforce (for example, raising a family or taking care of parents or in-laws) and because women generally earn lower wages. In these cases, Social Security has provided a “spousal benefit” to married and certain divorced women based on their husbands’ work histories. The next section covers spousal benefits in detail.