Federal tax policy offered dependency tax expenditures to taxpayers who helped support their aging parents. This chapter analyzes the 1966 Congressional hearing investigating the adequacy of these federal tax incentives. The hearings occurred during a period of tax reform focused on reducing the number of tax expenditures available through the tax code. The parent’s dependency was not presumed but had to be documented, often resulting in intrusive IRS audits and limited access to benefits. Drawing on letters sent to the committee, this chapter analyzes the voices of adult children and the parents they supported. Their correspondence underscores the hardship that parental support exacted on adult children and their priorities regarding tax benefits for supporting parents. These letters also show the limited options available to parents in need. Relatively minor changes resulted from the hearings, but they illuminate how ideas of dependency and family operated in tax benefits.

This chapter analyzes the debates over inclusion of parents in the survivor benefit program under the 1939 amendments to the Social Security Act and the design and implementation of dependency standards for parents. Definitions and measures of dependency varied between different eligible groups. Qualifying for benefits proved difficult for aged Americans under administrative practices which privileged dependency centered on the nuclear family model. These benefits mirrored the occupational exclusions found in Old Age and Survivors Insurance, thus limiting access based on race, gender, and citizenship. Survivor benefits for parents are in a middle ground between means-tested and contributory systems in the spectrum of American social policy. While initially facing a means test, parent recipients were then presumed to be dependent for their lifetime, thus avoiding the continued investigations in OAA. Once dependency was established, the program’s administration placed recipients in the contributory track of social policy.