Before Social Security: Please Add Info

Elderly Americans suffered from homelessness and hunger before Social Security. Most middle class people now have 2 or less (even none) children) to help them along. Is there any better plan than Social Security to help working people when they can't work full time? Elderly people had died from untreated illness and hunger. Ask your grandparents. Ask older people in your community. I have talked with older people all my life. They told me what it was like.

Social Security and elderly poverty:

http://www.nber.org/aginghealth/summer04/w10466.html

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/07/elderly_poverty.html

Fighting elderly poverty

Between 1959 and 1974, the elderly poverty rate fell from 35 percent to 15 percent. This was largely attributable to a set of increases in Social Security benefits. The elderly poverty rate has continued to decline in subsequent decades, reaching 9.4 percent in 2006. Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits continue to play a key role in reducing elderly poverty, especially among women and people of color. If Social Security benefits did not exist, an estimated 44 percent of the elderly would be poor today, assuming no changes in behavior.

Yet there is still work to do. Currently, 3.4 million seniors age 65 and older live below the poverty line. Millions more are barely making ends meet just above the poverty line. While 9.4 percent of seniors had incomes in 2006 below the poverty threshold of $9,669 for an individual, and $12,186 for a couple, nearly a quarter of older Americans (22.4 percent) had family incomes below 150 percent of the poverty line.

If we had a better measure of poverty, the elderly poverty rate would be considerably higher. The current poverty measure gives no consideration to health care costs, among other problems. High medical bills for the elderly can greatly reduce the income available to meet their other needs. New York City has recently calculated its poverty rates under an improved approach proposed by the National Academy of Sciences. Among other things, it takes into account how much money people have left to meet basic needs after paying for their medical costs. Under this measure, the elderly poverty rate in New York City would have been 32 percent in 2006, compared to 18 percent under the official measure.
Demographics of elderly poverty

Most elderly poor are women. Very elderly women have even higher poverty rates.

As in other age groups, poverty does not affect senior men and women equally. A lifetime of lower earnings due to wage discrimination, absence from the labor market due to childbirth, and jobs that are less likely to have employer-sponsored retirement plans takes its toll.

* Over 2.3 million women over the age of 65—11.5 percent—live at or below the poverty line, while slightly over 1 million—6.6 percent—of senior men live in poverty.
* Nearly one in five—19 percent—of single, divorced, or widowed women over the age of 65 are poor, and the risk of poverty for older women only increases as they age.
* Women ages 75 and up are over three times as likely to be living in poverty as men in the same age range. Only 416,000 men in this age range live at or below the poverty line, while over 1.3 million women ages 75 and up are poor.
* Among married women, longer female life expectancy makes it likely that they will outlive their spouses, and be left without any additional sources of income they bring to the household.

This and the elimination of minimum wages and labor laws.

Sweat shops, homelessness and more. If you family can't take you in when you fall on hard times, you can just suffer the consequence.

When the GOP said they wanted to take the country back, they didn't say how far!

FDR saved this country by pushing the New Deal through Congress despite resistence from the Repubs. He did it by strength of character and appealing directly to the American people. With the modern corporate media repeating the conservative talking points as if they were facts, Obama should engage in some plain talk directly to the people. I could scream every time the news claims that the choice is between cuts in spending or "raising taxes". The Dems are not proposing "raising taxes" but rather raising revenue by eliminating the unfair tax breaks for the wealthy. Put it to the people very simply: should we cut benefits to 95% or more so that the few super rich and corporations can continue to accumulate more wealth? The Repubs have been trying to undue the New Deal for over 70 yaers and are on the verge of success. Obama needs to read a biography of FDR to see how to deal with the conservatives who want to take this country back to the 19th century.

I don't think he spent much time learning what the 1920s and 1930s were like. His grandparents who raised him were fairly well off.

These kinds of informative posts are exactly the ammunition we need to defend our intent ....