Women, Age, and Money

Ending the March Toward Poverty

My grandmother Alice was a young woman during the Great Depression. From that era forward, regardless of her circumstances, she counted every penny. I remember as a child going with her to the grocery store, where she inspected each green bean to make sure it was worthy of admission to her grocery cart.

When Grandma Alice was in her nineties and needed to move to a care home, she had to spend down the last of her money to qualify. She bought a gold watch—one was allowed to keep a watch—and wore it every day until she died on her 95^th birthday. So ironic to have such a horror of spending money, yet be required to buy a luxury in order to be supplied with the necessities. I often reflect on my grandmother’s life and wonder what she would have thought of the times in which we find ourselves.

Here in the United States, neither gender is in a good financial position in later life. The disappearance of defined benefit plans, the imposition under Reagan of an income tax on Social Security benefits, and the prevalence of ageism in the workplace, have all led to a lower standard of living for olders in the United States compared with other industrialized nations.

While those factors affect everyone, women are comparatively worse off for several reasons.

·     First, many women who are now older were not encouraged to develop financial literacy as their male siblings were. As a result, we may not have taken retirement savings as seriously.

·     Second, it remains more common for women to take time from their earning years to provide caretaking to children and to elderly relatives. We do not contribute to Social Security during those years, which lowers our eventual benefits.

·     Third, women are subject to discrimination in wages and in promotion opportunities throughout our careers. This limits our ability to save and lowers our Social Security benefits.

·     Fourth, ageism in the workplace affects women sooner than men. Women’s appearance (including grey hair) is more likely to be judged as part of our fitness for work.

·     Fifth, women’s retirement funds are more likely to be considered available for family members in need than are men’s retirement funds.

·     And, finally, women outlive men and thus need to stretch those smaller retirement dollars further.

One female researcher who pondered these factors called women’s retirement the “march toward poverty.”

These challenges are compounded for women who are also members of other marginalized groups.

·     Single women and lesbians do not have access to a male partner’s (often higher) Social Security upon the death of a male spouse.

·     Women married under ten years do not have access to a former spouse’s Social Security, even if they took time off to raise a family with their former spouse.

·     Women of color, women with disabilities, women in lower paid jobs, women who lost work early due to gendered ageism, are all likely to end their working years with lower Social Security and savings.

·     Women with lower earnings and women of color are less likely to have home equity to draw upon later in life.

·     Women with lower earnings are less likely to have the financial bandwidth to jumpstart a new career after 65.

Given these issues, it is not surprising that homelessness is growing among older adults below the age of 65 (when certain social safety net programs begin). Mortality rates are four times higher for homeless olders than for olders who are housed.

What we can do as individuals:

·     Encourage financial literacy for our daughters and granddaughters.

·     Refuse to buy into the idea that we must be earning money to be worthwhile.

·     Develop a realistic assessment of our resources and needs in retirement, given that some of our expenses (for clothing and transportation, for example) may be lower when we are not working.

·     Cultivate ways to spend less and ways to enjoy ourselves for free: visit the public library, write our reflections, take walks with friends. Elizabeth White’s book, 55, Underemployed, and Faking Normal, is a great resource for this approach.

·     Look at housing solutions such as Golden Girls houses, downsizing, and moving to a less expensive part of the country (More about creative housing approaches in Part Two of this blog series).

·     If we qualify for benefits, take them. AARP has found that many seniors do not use programs like SNAP even if they qualify.

·     If we do continue to want (or need) income, look at a variety of employment options:

o  Start a business. Studies are showing that older entrepreneurs are more likely to be successful than businesses begun by younger people.

o  Work part time: For many of us, working fewer hours can help to balance structure and freedom.

o  Freelance: Applying the skills of a lifetime to a solo consulting practice is another way to create balance and keep funds coming in.

o  Invent a new career: Take your favorite part of your old career and make it into your new career. Or learn something altogether different and pursue a new passion.

These strategies can help each of us individually, which is great. And it is important to look at the forest, not just the trees. With our culture of rugged individualism, it is tempting to think that each person facing financial struggles in later life should solve their own problems. But poverty in later life is not about someone’s decision to buy a latte twenty years ago. Poverty in later life is an aggregate class issue that calls for an organized response. We olders and our younger allies should push for public policy solutions that benefit all older people, including:

·     Give businesses incentives to hire older people

·     Create incentives for job sharing and part time work

·     Institute a floor on Social Security benefits

·     Change the Social Security regulations so that widows keep their prior husband’s benefits if they remarry before age 60

·     Increase funding for late life care at home, not just in nursing homes

·     Improve regulation of nursing homes

The solution to the “march toward poverty” is emphatically not to make women and other olders work until extreme old age. The solution is to move away from a culture of rugged individualism, toward a culture that recognizes our interdependence across the lifespan.