Summary: Aging in Poverty

On the first of every month, Gloria counts her pills. She is 71 with five prescriptions. Her Social Security check is $1,147. Rent is $785. Utilities run $120. That leaves $242 for food, medications, transportation, and everything else. She can afford to fill three prescriptions. The cholesterol she skips every other month. The antidepressant she stopped filling two years ago. The arthritis medication she never fills at all.

Approximately 5.8 million Americans aged 65 and older live below the federal poverty line of roughly $15,000. But the Elder Index, which calculates what a single older adult actually needs, puts that figure at $25,000 to $30,000 depending on location. By that measure, approximately 40 percent of older Americans lack economic security. The demographics are predictable: women poorer than men, Black and Hispanic Americans poorer than white Americans, workers from low-wage jobs without pensions arriving at 65 with little besides Social Security.

Housing consumes most of what poor older Americans have. Among renters 65 and older with incomes below $15,000, the median rent burden exceeds 50 percent of income. Homelessness among older adults is rising faster than in any other age group, with people newly homeless in their sixties and seventies pushed out by rent increases, medical costs, or a spouse’s death.

The life expectancy gap between rich and poor is staggering. Research by Raj Chetty and colleagues found that men in the top 1 percent of income live about 15 years longer than men in the bottom 1 percent. For women, roughly 10 years. Chronic disease follows poverty: diabetes more prevalent and poorly controlled, hypertension less consistently treated, depression running at twice the rate of affluent peers.

Supplemental Security Income provides a maximum federal benefit of $943 per month, well below the poverty line. Only about 48 percent of eligible older adults participate in SNAP. The policy solutions are not mysteries: expanding Social Security’s minimum benefit, building more subsidized senior housing, adding dental, vision, and hearing to Medicare, raising SNAP benefits and simplifying enrollment. All are expensive. All require the decision that poverty in old age is unacceptable.

Gloria worked for thirty-four years. This is what the system gives her: a one-bedroom apartment with a broken elevator, three of five medications, and canned vegetables.