Commercial Appeal (Tennessee), July 13, 2008: Poverty: the wages of well-spent lives
By Bob Bernstein
Special to Viewpoint
Sunday, July 13, 2008
After recently celebrating our birth as the most wonderful country on the face of the earth, and the most abundant, we need to face the fact that we have a whole population of senior adults who live in poverty.
One of the biggest fears as we age is outliving our money. Without adequate finances, I ask, “How will I live?”
As we explore the plight of the elderly in our country, we can easily see two classes of poverty that our seniors face. One area is “financial poverty.” This includes seniors who have worked hard their entire life, raised families and children, but were unable to make enough money to save or invest for old age.
The second class of poverty that seniors face is “emotional poverty.” This is what I see going on with seniors who were well educated, had good paying jobs, raised families and children, and are now watching their life savings wither away with the increased cost of living and downturn of the stock market.
In Memphis and Shelby County we have the highest population of poor elderly in the state.
Do we need to look at the quality of life that our seniors have, and what responsibility and commitment we have in ensuring that they have a good, and enhanced, quality of life?
All of us working in our communities’ aging networks are rapidly becoming aware and sensitive that the baby boomers are coming. Change will be needed. What will be the financial resources of this group as they enter the senior population?
Presently, we have a group of concerned and committed people involved with a consortium focusing on redesigning an aging America.
One of the greatest successes of American social policy over the last few decades has been a reduction in elderly poverty. Even as we see this reduction, there are more than 3.3 million senior adults still in poverty.
At a time when seniors should be enjoying the fruits of their life’s works, their life is being filled with stress, anxiety and fear of what will happen tomorrow.
In addition to the 3.3 million seniors who live in poverty, several million more live just above the poverty line. For many of these elderly people, poverty is the reward for adult lives well spent.
Good housing and proper medical care are often out of reach for the poor elderly, or so expensive that little money is left for other needs. In our land of abundance, hundreds of thousands of our seniors go hungry each and every day.
In the current debate over Social Security reform, the plight of America’s poor elderly has received little attention. With the elderly poverty rate below that of the general population, many policy-makers do not see it as a national concern.
The near silence of our political leaders on the issue of elderly poverty is testament to the dark side of American exceptionalism among industrialized and non-industrialized societies and democracies.
Would an elderly entitlement program that left one in five seniors in poverty or near poverty be viewed as a success?
American indifference to the elderly, not to mention the elderly poor, is perhaps the single best indicator of the limits of compassion in our country. Claude Pepper, where are you now that we need you? (Pepper, who died in 1989, was a Florida senator and congressman who was an outspoken advocate for the elderly.)
Beyond plain callousness and fiscal stinginess, there is no good explanation why so many of our elderly are consigned to poverty.
However, we are still very fortunate in our community to have such a strong network of advocates for our senior population. Many, such as the Aging Commission of the Mid-South, Meritan, Metropolitan Inter-faith Association (MIFA), and church and synagogue ministries are actively involved advocates for our senior population.
The questions I pose are: Do we idly stand by and do nothing regarding elderly poverty in our community? Or do we become advocates for our senior population, who many times cannot voice their needs and frustrations or don’t want to be a burden on their children?
We have a youth-oriented society, a population that is focused on delaying the aging process.
We are an aging society despite all of our attempts to deny it. When we are young we say, “I never want to be like that or get old.”
We will all grow old and the question will remain: Who will be there to advocate for me, to speak up as we try to eradicate elderly poverty in our community?
Our senior population should be able to afford and obtain adequate shelter, prescription drugs, nutritious meals and quality health care in addition to having an enhanced quality of life. Most other countries in the world revere their elderly. Shouldn’t we?
Bob Bernstein is president of Geriatric Consultants in Memphis.