Older Women Struggle to Make Ends Meet

[Starry Messenger]

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/older-women-struggle-to-make-ends-meet/

The report compares income, not including food stamps or help with utility bills, to very basic monthly expenses for housing, food, transportation and health care. For a single person, this Elder Economic Security Standard Index, developed by Wider Opportunities for Women, estimates an annual income of $19,000 to $28,000, depending on whether they own their homes outright, rent or pay a mortgage. For married couples, the necessary income to cover basic expenses ranges from $29,500 to $39,000.

More than half the nation’s elderly do not make enough. But women, who typically outlive men, are more vulnerable. Nearly half of white women, 61 percent of Asian women and three-quarters of black and Hispanic women have incomes that fall below the Elder Index levels. Men 65 or older report incomes that are almost 75 percent higher than women’s.

“Occupational segregation, pay inequity and care-giving responsibilities all contribute to women’s reduced earnings during their working-age years and diminished capacity for saving,” the report says.

<snip>

“A staggering majority of older women in America can’t afford to cover their most basic expenses,” said Donna Addkison, the president of Wider Opportunities for Women. “This is the startling reality facing countless older women around the country and a harsh eye-opener for working women and families who are saving for retirement today.”

[niyad]

1. what a screwed-up country this is.

[mitchtv]

2. sad, really sad

and the takeaways are just beginning

[Starry Messenger]

4. They are, it is frightening.

I see my mom struggling along, and she *has* a pension and a work-healthcare plan in retirement. She has voiced several times in the last year that if she didn't have it, we'd all be living en famille like a co-op. Heck, it might still come to that.

[roguevalley]

3. I admire people's patience.

[jwirr]

7. I don't think it is patience. I think it is more like helplessness. Not knowing what to do the fix.

[Smilo]

5. That is why we need single payer and

the social security cap to be lifted.

[jwirr]

6. I'm here to testify that this is true. I get a lot less than that even considering food stamps and

energy assistance. One thing I have learned is that survival depends on knowing where the food programs like Ruby's Kitchen are located. I am poor enough that I do have good health care coverage through Medicare and Medicaid. Other than that it is pretty bad. If I were not sharing costs with my grandson I would be homeless. In fact I was for a while.

[Starry Messenger]

8. (hugs)

Last edited Fri Mar 30, 2012, 01:07 AM - Edit history (1)

I see the struggles on my mom's side of the family, which is largely women. My mom's youngest sister lived with her eldest son, his wife and their two little boys for a few years too.

[jwirr]

9. Thanks.

[One_Life_To_Give]

10. Rome wasn't built in a day

Being 65 and older means these women were born 47 and earlier. Graduated from high school when mothers were encouraged to stay home and raise the kids. College was to get an Mrs. Every job had two official pay scales. And are we to believe that even if 1970's feminism had been 100% successful these women would be economically disadvantaged in old age?

Seems to me a question we should be asking. In 50 years when this years college graduates are retiring. How will their retirement prospects look compared to similar men?

[Starry Messenger]

11. What do we do in the 50 years in the meantime?

Watch mom eat catfood?

[One_Life_To_Give]

12. temporary solutions for temporary problems

You use safety nets to help those in need. But you don't retroactively give a pension for 40yrs engineer service at NASA to each woman who was unemployed/underemployed resulting from sexism 50 years ago.

[Starry Messenger]

13. I don't see in the article where it suggested that women get NASA pensions?

Can you quote it for me? The print at the article is rather small, so perhaps I'm missing it.

[One_Life_To_Give]

14. Root causes of the problem

The 75yr old woman on average has much less income because:

She was born in 1937
At 8 years of age she was subjected to the government campaign to ensure jobs were available to the returning troops.
As Elvis Presley and Pat Boone were topping the charts she graduated high school where she might become a Nurse or Teacher if she was really lucky and talented. But even then she was expected to find a good husband and become a housewife and mother. What jobs she might have held during her youth all had the posted "Men's Wage Scale" and the "Women's wage scale" hurting not only her income but self esteem as well. When Sputnik flew overhead and captured the imaginations and fears of young men across the country. She was being pressured that to support her husbands self esteem a good wife would never work outside the home. By the time feminism came about in the 60's she was more worried about caring for elementary school age kids.

So today she settles for the greater of her personal social security or 50% of her husbands social security and whatever survivor benefits she may be entitled to from his pension. It's lower on average than the typical man born the same year because of 75 years of sexism. And the only true fix for that is to roll back the clock and create total equality from 1937 forward. But I don't know how to do that.

On edit the above is nothing members of this board are not aware of. My point is that by fixing the discrimination at day 1 of life the problems 75 years later will have fixed themselves. We can work the human problem of meeting our elderly needs. But there is little to be gained by focusing on the gender aspects as their current situation is more a function of what has already happened as opposed to what is currently happening. What we can control is the messages that 8 year old girl receives about her worth and place in society. By fixing what would otherwise be a lifetime of repression. We solve the issue of her retirement years. Something I can't do for the woman born in 1937. But can help that 75 year old woman in 2079.

[Starry Messenger]

15. This is a Feminist forum.

Part of our purpose is to focus on the gender aspects of all social ills.

There is no need to roll back the clock, but there is a crying need to alleviate poverty in a sector that is suffering *now* from the effects of institutional sexism from decades ago. Women who are existing in poverty effect the economy, her spending power is reduced and this has effects on the rest of the economic structure (not to mention her impoverished life of suffering). More money needs to be put into her hands now, not decades from now. The trend is for the safety net being reduced, not expanded. We can control that by identifying the problem and directing awareness and activism there.

[yardwork]

16. So what are you suggesting? Let the old women die until female engineers retire?

[One_Life_To_Give]

17. Suggesting the machine isn't broken at the SSA

Maybe it's my bizarre way of looking at the world. But I see life as a process much like a block of steel going thru a factory. Asking at the end why you have a Geo vs a Cadillac wasn't the fault of the process to put tires on the car. Nor would just slapping P235/60R15's onto a Geo make it a Caddy. Doesn't mean we don't have to help one or both get thru a snow drift. Just that they are different for a lot of reasons that happened well back in the process. If you want them all to be Caddy's then everyone has to start with a Caddy frame. It's not the fault nor an indication of a problem that the tires being put on the Geo are not identical to the ones being placed on a Caddy.