Impoverished Grannies

Elizabeth II    (NASA photo)

Not every elderly female gets to live like royalty.  In fact, many get to live in poverty.

Although the Affordable Care Act cut into the “widespread and arbitrary practice of charging women higher health insurance premiums than men,” elderly females still suffer higher healthcare costs than males.

Since women often live longer than their male housemates, far more grandmothers live alone than grandfathers.  Since women often have less savings (due to less earnings), they can wind up spending “at least half of their income toward housing.”

Far more women rely upon Social Security for their sustenance than men.  To make matters worse, these benefits are generally on the lower end of the scale, since women usually “earn only 79 cents for every dollar a man earns.”

More and more grandmothers (and great grandmothers) are therefore working during traditional retirement years.  Unfortunately, the earning gap increases even further at that stage.  “Women over 50 make just 68 cents on the dollar to men of the same age.”

Resources

http://www.ncdsv.org/SSNCPL_Woman-View-Older-Women-and-Poverty_3-30-2016.pdf

Copyright September 3, 2018 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved