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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Blue 
 
 
Question: 
 
What are the financial facts regarding widowhood? 
 
Answer: 
 
One of the things that is startling to me and to all of the audiences 
that I speak to, when I share these statistics, they are absolutely 
amazed.  
 
Here are the statistics: 
 
80% of American women will face widowhood. 
 
Now, that’s bad enough, but the average age of widowhood begins at 
age 55. This was in the year 2000, the study that was done. So, on 
the average, when a woman reaches age 55, she can expect to be 
widowed. Now, obviously, that’s an average, but that means that there 
are probably a lot of young widows, far more so than there are even 
older widows.  
 
And the life-expectancy of a widow is 18 years. 
 
And, most significantly—the life-expectancy of women being 18 
years—80% of women who end up in poverty were not in poverty prior 
to widowhood. 
 
So, widowhood is a dramatic and horrible thing for a woman, because 
she now not only faces the loss of her spouse, but in most cases, 
financially, she’s not prepared for it.  
 
 
 
There are many ways to prepare for widowhood, and my counsel and 
encouragement to men is to take into account the fact that your wife 
is most likely going to be a widow.  
 
Is she prepared financially? Is she prepared emotionally? Is she 
prepared spiritually? Is she prepared in every way to experience 
widowhood?  
 
Because, in 80% of the cases, your wife will be a widow. 
 
 
 
 
 
Blue -2- 
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