Voices of the Elderly Poor
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union VOICES OF THE ELDERLY POOR BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS Last fall I began research on a book concerning poverty and the aged, the working title of which is "Down and Old in...
...How do you get through the day...
...Nothing we have accomplished thus far in the way of social reform will be adequate to the demographic challenge 50 years hence...
...Millions of elderly Americans today have attained a status that somewhat resembles those apocryphal "golden years...
...Well, no...
...For all their anxieties, the aged poor have been first-rate company —generous, spirited and far from defeated...
...In addition, Congress has presented its older constituents with a grab-bag of benefits and services, ranging from special tax exemptions and retirement shelters to a lengthy menu of social programs imbedded in the Older Americans Act of 1965...
...In 1982, according to the U.S...
...The bad news is that inequality among the aged has not been reduced and may in fact be getting worse...
...Despite the cushion that may be provided by private pensions and cost-of-living adjustments (colas) in Social Security, this underclass will not go away until we commit ourselves to its banishment...
...Hope Grows for Vigorous Old Age, proclaimed the New York Times...
...Long-suffering and uncomplaining—and far less troublesome to society than their younger, more obstreperous counterparts—the elderly poor get remarkably short shrift in the media and in Congress...
...Cynthia and Corrine are in their 70s now...
...Oldest Americans: Not So Frail, it announced a few weeks later...
...Alas, these enormous outlays will do little for the aging poor...
...Most bring to the interviews an attractive blend of innocence and irony, the two staples of survivorship...
...Folks around here could use a listener...
...My first marriage was to a minister," she told me, "but he turned out already married, so we got 'divorced...
...He' d come home at three in the morning and I'd ask him, 'Where you been, man.' He'dsay, 'I haven't been nowhere but window shoppin' to see what you want for Christmas.' I divorced him, too...
...In 1983 the poverty rate among black women beyond 65 was an astonishing 42 percent...
...The elderly poor by then could exceed 15 million...
...I didn't have what you'd call a bad life—just a complicated one...
...Over the months I have met many secret exulters among the aged poor...
...it is expected to reach 21 per cent by the year 2030...
...Perhaps one clue can be found in the advice W. B. Yeats offered "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing": Be secret and exult...
...Aged women "who frequent the poorest furnished roomsof...
...Among other things, Hunter worries about the derision displayed by younger, more affluent citizens...
...Aimed at dispelling the notion that virtually all older Americans are in the money and on the golf course, the book will focus on those hard-to-see points where people and policies intersect...
...Love, Corrine...
...Hopeyou're feeling better...
...He estimated that in 1960 more than half the elderly, 8 million Americans, were poor...
...Yet the welcome improvement has brought in its wake a most unwelcome consequence, one sadly characteristic of the roseate '80s...
...Twenty-seven per cent of the Federal budget now goes to the aged, compared with only 2 per cent a generation ago...
...Each morning in her bathrobe she traipses down to the lobby and writes notes to all the tenants who have not received mail that day...
...They insisted they couldn't wait to get Corrine's notes...
...Will you be coming back sometime...
...Most of the elderly poor are female (71 per cent) and either black (40 per cent) or Hispanic (26 per cent...
...She's spoiled me," one man said...
...That such measures have paid off seems self-evident...
...Early on in his pioneering, turn-of-the-century study, Poverty, Robert Hunter singles out elderly poor people as "the most numerous of all" and notes that they "are insufficiently cared for in all cities—with the possible exception of Boston...
...Cynthia Callaway asked as I stood in her apartment doorway...
...a Supplementary Security Income program (SSI) guarantees a modest level of sustenance to the aged and disabled poor...
...New York," hecomplains, are called such "bitter names" as " scrubs" and "harpies...
...By the time Michael Harrington rediscovered poverty in The Other A mer-ica(1962), and despite the flow by then of Social Security dollars, elderly nomenclature had changed more noticeably than the elderly condition...
...No one pays a penalty, other than one of conscience, for overlooking poverty and its aged victims...
...A major difficulty is finding anyone prepared to speak on their behalf, or even hear their grievances...
...Don't the interviews depress you...
...Overall, about one of every four older Americans suffers from a serious income shortage...
...My hometown newspaper, the New Haven Register, then outdid the Times with a pair of headlines on a single page...
...Our across-the-board approach now threatens to confine millions of older Americans in a permanent underclass, one set apart because it has been cast aside...
...The prospect of growing old may be scary enough without adding in the possibility of growing poor as well...
...Several of my friends have expressed a mild distaste for the subject I have chosen even as they have applauded its redeeming social value...
...From the aged poor person's special angle of vision, America has had plenty of time to get its act together...
...Stephen Crystal, a Harvard social scientist, has examined this fresh dichotomy in his book on America's Old Age Crisis (1984...
...Most of us do not like to dwell on such matters...
...He took him away...
...There is Corrine Thomas, who operates as a kind of Miss Lonelyhearts of her "Senior Housing Project" in Burlington, Vermont...
...What these figures suggest is the recent emergence of a two-tier system within the aged population—one protected by subsidies and exemptions and fortified with cash, the other defenseless and broke...
...I'm thinking ofyou," shemay write...
...they do not have enough money...
...Helpful as some of these bulletins may be, they effectively conceal the torments of the aged behind a cascade of optimism, and consequently do nothing to sharpen our sense of urgency...
...I don't think I could stand an empty mailbox now...
...oneasked...
...People may "talk of the 'golden years' and of 'senior citizens,'" Harrington scoffed in a chapter reserved for the aged...
...Medicare and the Older Americans Act, plus the Social Security sweeteners that followed, all testified to our belief that old age and deprivation went hand in hand...
...They are "plagued by ill health...
...Age Improves Intellectual AcnvrnES, Creativity, it declared below the fold...
...There has arisen a widespread perception that older Americans now can do just fine without public succor or subsidy, because poverty among the aged has been virtually wiped out...
...As Harrington has noted in his latest assessment, The New American Poverty (1984), our welfare state "is primarily for people over 65, most of whom are not now, and for a long time have not been, poor.' The irony of our elderly welfare strategy is that equitable subsidies have guaranteed grosser inequities...
...States of the Union VOICES OF THE ELDERLY POOR BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS Last fall I began research on a book concerning poverty and the aged, the working title of which is "Down and Old in America...
...If relatively few can be termed rich, a considerable number can be described as comfortably situated...
...they are socially isolated...
...On the contrary, it is likely to expand along with the aging population in general...
...In 1980 their proportion had risen to 11.3 per cent...
...Embracing Harrington's tacit assumption that the aged made up a special group requiring special measures, weresponded chiefly with programs and privileges that were age-tested rather than means-tested...
...I do not pretend to understand the sources of their considerable strength...
...Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, 12 per cent of the elderly reported annual household incomes in excess of $30,000, and 25 per cent reported incomes over $20,000—no paradise for the aged, to be sure, but a brighter picture than the ones Harrington and Hunter painted...
...But those are euphemisms to ease the conscience of the callous...
...Most of their lives they worked for low wages—in laundries, hospitals, hotels—and because Social Security benefits are pegged to past earnings, their work has come to very little...
...In a two-line apostrophe to "Old Age," Walt Whitman wrote: "I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads / itself grandly as it pours in the great sea.' Today, oldagehasitselfbecomeagreat sea that continues to enlarge and spread, thanks to the startling increases in longevity that have occurred since Whitman' s time...
...Futurists and journalists have taken to constantly reassuring us on this score...
...Thegoodnews," he writes, "is that old age benefits have been successful in eliminating systematic economic deprivation of the elderly as a class...
...Social Security benefits have risen sharply...
...My second marriage was to a fast talker...
...Some demographers are predicting that by 2025 subsidies to the elderly will account for at least half of all Federal tax dollars...
...A century ago older Americans made up less than 4 per cent of the total population...
...At bottom, '' America tends to make its people miserable when they become old...
...We have traveled a decent distance since Harrington's j eremiad, and in the process we may have shed a few calluses from our collective conscience...
...Above the fold the news was still better: Sex Doesn't End When Social Security Begins...
...After 18 years I was getting ready to marry him again, but the Lord knew best...
...Medicare has helped older Americans meet their health bills...
...What follows here are some considerations arising out of the early research...
...There is also Cynthia Gallaway of Alexandria, Virginia, a lively reminis-cer...
...The consequences have been costly in more ways than one...
...It is not hard to see how this happened...
...When I heard about this, I instantly dismissed it as too corny to be helpful—until I talked to some of the other tenants...
...In fact, the elderly poor are still with us—3.8 million of them if we go by official Federal measures of poverty, and more than 6 million if, with justice, we include those who have only slightly higher incomes...
...Because of all things known That is the most difficult...
Vol. 68 • January 1985 • No. 1
