To amend title II of the Social Security Act to increase survivors benefits for disabled widows, widowers, and surviving divorced spouses, and for other purposes.
Analysis under review: This bill has generated analysis that may be too generic or incomplete. Clause-level evidence remains available below.
Summary
What This Bill Does
Increases Social Security survivors benefits for disabled widows, widowers, and surviving divorced spouses, expands child-in-care eligibility, improves delayed-claiming benefit treatment, and protects existing means-tested program eligibility.
Who Benefits and How
Disabled surviving spouses, surviving divorced spouses, child-in-care beneficiaries, and current beneficiaries affected by the hold-harmless rule could receive higher or earlier survivor benefits without losing other aid immediately.
Who Bears the Burden and How
Federal payers would face higher survivor-benefit costs, and Social Security administrators would need to implement broader eligibility and benefit-calculation changes.
Key Provisions
- Makes disabled widows, widowers, and surviving divorced spouses eligible for unreduced survivors benefits without the prior age-50-to-59 limitation.
- Modifies benefit calculations and delayed-claiming rules for survivors and raises the child-in-care age limit to 18 or 19 for students.
- Disregards resulting benefit increases for current beneficiaries when determining eligibility for federally funded programs.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Increases Social Security survivors benefits for disabled widows, widowers, and surviving divorced spouses, expands child-in-care eligibility, improves delayed-claiming benefit treatment, and protects existing means-tested program eligibility.
Key Policy Areas
Social Welfare, Government Operations
Primary Purpose
Increases Social Security survivors benefits for disabled widows, widowers, and surviving divorced spouses, expands child-in-care eligibility, improves delayed-claiming benefit treatment, and protects existing means-tested program eligibility.
Policy Domains
Main Provisions
Identified Gains
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation- Disabled widows, widowers, and surviving divorced spouses
- Children and families eligible for child-in-care survivor benefits
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation
Identified Costs
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation- Federal Social Security payers and administrators
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
IntroducedMr. Blumenthal (for himself, Mrs. Gillibrand, Ms. Klobuchar, Mrs. Murray, …
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
Widows, widowers, and surviving divorced spouses
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology