Under the current Social Secuirty system spouses who have never worked may claim a Soical Security spousal benefit which pays the non-working spouse up to 50% of the working spouses full retirement age Social Security benefit.
This system is terribly unfair to families where both spouses have worked full-time. Why should someone who have never paid into the system get a benefit? No private pension would ever offer this feature. This could go a long way toward ensuring that those of us who have worked and pay into the system collect our promised benefits.
To be clear this does not apply to survivor benefits. Certainly a spouse should be entitied to collect benefits based on the deceased spouses earnign