California seniors have highest poverty rate, study finds
California's seniors have nation's highest poverty rate - 20% are below threshold due to state's high cost of living
Carolyn Jones
Updated 7:03 am, Tuesday, March 25, 2014
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Allen Stross returns to his home after lunch at the North Berkeley Senior Center and some grocery shopping. Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle
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Allen Stross of
Berkeley started working at age 13. He's been a delivery boy, a sign painter, a
Navy sailor and a photographer for the Detroit Free Press. Now, at age 90, he and his wife live on
about $21,000 a year. After they pay for rent and medications, they're left with
just $416 a month.
"No restaurants. No movies. No new clothes. We look for a lot
of freebies," he said. "But I try not to worry about things I can't control,
such as the past or the future. My wife's a Buddhist. That helps."
Stross and his wife, a retired art history teacher, are among a
growing throng of formerly middle-class Americans who find themselves in poverty
as seniors. For about 6.3 million seniors nationwide living below the poverty
line, that means eating most meals at free dining rooms, rarely turning up the
heat, rationing medications and praying that emergencies never strike.
California, with
its high cost of living and health care, leads the nation in the percentage of
older adults living in poverty, according to a 2013 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Twenty percent of California adults
over age 65 live below the poverty threshold of about $16,000 annually, when
taking into account the higher cost of housing and health care.
Poverty rising again
Senior poverty
levels declined for decades in the 20th century due to Social Security and other safety-net programs, but started to
rise again after the 2008 economic collapse, when millions of older people lost
their jobs or homes, saw their savings evaporate or pensions slashed. In the Bay
Area, especially, the soaring cost of living hits seniors especially hard
because their incomes are fixed.
Longer life spans also play a role. Some people simply outlive
their savings, and spend more years enduring costly and debilitating
medical care.
Another contributing factor to the rising senior poverty rate
is the decline of marriage and the scattering of families, leaving many seniors
single and alone, without a partner or nearby relatives to pool earnings or
share costs. Gays and lesbians, who until recently were not permitted to marry,
are especially impacted, social workers have said.
A report last
month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office showed that single
seniors have a far greater chance of living in poverty than their married
counterparts, largely because they have no spousal or survivor benefits to draw
from, no one with whom to share expenses and, if they're parents, they probably
spent surplus money on their kids instead of investing it for retirement.
Twenty-one percent of never-married women over 65, for
example, live below the poverty line, compared with 5 percent of married women
in the same age group, according to the report.
Men didn't fare much better. Over 19 percent of never-married
men over 65 live in poverty, while 4.3 percent of married men do.
The U.S. Senate's Special Committee on Aging opened a hearing on the matter this
month, looking into the plight of seniors living in poverty. Senators also are
looking at a bill that would raise the amount of money a senior can keep - from
$2,000 to $10,000 - before qualifying for certain benefits.
The situation is particularly dire in California, due to the
high cost of health care and housing. About 20 percent of California's seniors -
compared to 15 percent nationally - live below the poverty threshold when taking
health care expenses into account, according to the Kaiser foundation study.
Stross, for example, receives less than half the amount
required for seniors to cover basic expenses in Alameda County, according to the
Elder Economic Security Index, which looks at rent, food, transportation, health
care and miscellaneous expenses. He and his wife receive Social Security and
small pensions, totaling $1,700 a month, but their rent is nearly $1,000 a month
and they spend well over $1,000 annually on medications
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