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Updated: May 26, 2026 – H.R. 8490, the Social Security Caregiver Credit Act of 2026, was introduced in the House on April 29, 2026 by Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL-10), with companion Senate legislation S. 4396 introduced by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) on April 27, 2026. The bill is now in committee and has not yet been scheduled for a floor vote.
H.R. 8490, introduced April 29, 2026, would amend Title II of the Social Security Act to grant up to five years of deemed wage credits to unpaid caregivers who provide at least 80 hours of monthly care to a dependent relative without monetary compensation.
An estimated 53 million unpaid family caregivers across the United States currently receive zero credit in Social Security’s benefit formula for those years of service, resulting in measurably lower retirement checks for the rest of their lives.
When an American leaves the workforce to care for an aging parent, a child with a disability, or a spouse recovering from illness, Social Security does not see that sacrifice. The program sees a year of zero wages.
Because the Social Security Administration calculates your retirement benefit using your 35 highest-earning years, every year you spend caregiving and not earning a paycheck pulls your final benefit downward.
H.R. 8490, the Social Security Caregiver Credit Act of 2026, proposes to fix that structural gap and for millions of women who make up approximately 60 percent of America’s unpaid caregiver workforce, the financial consequences of its passage or failure are not abstract.
What H.R. 8490 Actually Does, in Plain Terms
The bill, introduced by Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois’s 10th Congressional District, would amend Title II of the Social Security Act to add a new provision for deemed wages.
Deemed wages are not actual earnings, they are a legal mechanism by which the Social Security Administration counts a qualifying period of time as if the individual had earned a wage, for the specific purpose of calculating their Average Indexed Monthly Earnings, or AIME.
The AIME is the central number in your Social Security benefit calculation. It takes your actual wage history, adjusts it for inflation, and averages your top 35 earning years. Your Primary Insurance Amount, the base benefit you collect at full retirement age, derives directly from that AIME figure.
If years of your working life contain $0 in earnings because you were providing unpaid family care, those zeros drag your AIME downward and permanently reduce your monthly check.
Under H.R. 8490 and its Senate companion S. 4396, a caregiver who: spends at least 80 hours per month providing care to a dependent relative, AND, receives no monetary compensation for that care
would be credited with deemed wages for up to five years of qualifying months, with those years treated as high-earning periods in the AIME calculation rather than zero-income gaps.
The qualifying relative can be a child under age 12, an aging parent, a spouse, a grandchild, or any chronically dependent family member. The SSA would compute the benefit on a defined formula outlined in the bill text, published in full at GovInfo.gov.
For caregivers, this is the difference between retiring with dignity and retiring in poverty. Senator Gillibrand’s office reported that in New York State alone, 4.1 million residents provided unpaid caregiving in 2025, collectively contributing more than 2.6 billion hours of hands-on care.
At the national scale, the 53 million unpaid family caregivers in the United States are, under current law, working full-time jobs that the Social Security system does not acknowledge.
How Social Security Would Process the Credit if the Bill Becomes Law
Understanding the caregiver credit mechanics requires understanding how SSA computes eligibility. The Social Security Administration, which runs the enumeration, records, and eligibility verification systems, does not move money directly.
When it determines that a benefit is payable, the agency passes its payment file to the U.S. Treasury, which holds the Social Security Trust Fund assets. The Treasury then routes the electronic funds transfer through the Federal Reserve’s ACH network to your bank account on your designated payment date.
H.R. 8490 would operate upstream of all of that, at the eligibility computation stage. If enacted, caregivers who meet the 80-hour monthly threshold and file the appropriate documentation with SSA would see those deemed wage years factored into their AIME before the first benefit payment is ever calculated.
The bill’s eligibility window would begin applying to months after December 2026, meaning caregivers who qualify based on service in January 2027 forward would begin accumulating eligible months.
For a caregiver who dedicates five full years to a dependent relative, the AIME boost could translate to meaningfully higher monthly checks, potentially hundreds of dollars per month, over a retirement that may span 20 to 30 years.
This is why the caregiver benefit gap has attracted bipartisan attention across multiple congressional sessions, though the bill has not yet passed. The Social Security Caregiver Credit Act has been reintroduced in each Congress since at least 2015, and has consistently stalled in committee despite broad conceptual support.
The Trust Fund Reality and What Happens Next
The bill’s sponsors acknowledge one important backdrop: the Social Security Trust Fund is currently projected by the Congressional Budget Office to be depleted by 2032 to 2034. That projection creates both urgency and complication.
Urgency, because caregivers who are already nearing retirement age cannot wait indefinitely for structural reforms. Complication, because any expansion of Social Security benefits must be funded, either through new revenue, benefit offsets elsewhere, or direct Trust Fund transfers.
The bill does not currently include a dedicated funding mechanism. That absence is the primary reason advocacy organizations and legislative observers expect it to face significant resistance even as its human case grows stronger.
Organizations currently endorsing H.R. 8490 and S. 4396 include Social Security Works, the National Alliance for Caregiving, the ALS Association, and the Alliance for Retired Americans, according to Senator Gillibrand’s official press release.
Current legislative status: both the House bill and Senate companion are in the first stage of the legislative process, referred to committee as of late April 2026. No markup hearing has been scheduled as of publication.
You can track the bill’s status directly at congress.gov by searching H.R. 8490, 119th Congress.
What This Means
The caregiver credit represented in H.R. 8490 addresses one of the most financially damaging structural gaps in the American retirement system. For millions of families currently in or approaching the caregiving years.
What You Should Do Now
- Track the bill at Congress.gov under H.R. 8490, 119th Congress and contact your representative to register support if it aligns with your situation.
- Request your Social Security statement at SSA.gov to see exactly which years in your earnings record show zero or low wages due to caregiving. Those are the years this bill would directly address.
- Understand that even without H.R. 8490, your Social Security payment dates and current benefit amounts are governed by existing SSA rules, the bill changes future calculations, not current payments.
- If you are currently providing at least 80 hours of monthly care, begin documenting your caregiving activity now. If a future version of this bill passes with a retroactive component, that documentation could support your eligibility claim.
- Review the SSA benefit calculator at SSA.gov to estimate how zero-income years are currently affecting your projected retirement benefit.
