African American women share with other women and with African American men characteristics that shape their beneficiary status under the Social Security system, as well as their views of the retirement income program. Like other women, African American women live more years than African American men and thus receive retirement benefits from Social Security for a longer period than their male counterparts. In addition, African American women and women of other racial/ethnic groups benefit from the progressive formula used to calculate Social Security retirement benefits, which provides lower-wage earners a higher percentage of their earnings relative to higher-wage earners. Women disproportionately benefit from the use of this formula, since they dominate the ranks of low-wage lifetime earners due to frequent employment in temporary and part-time jobs.