For Seniors, The Cost of Poverty is Nine Years of Life, Study Finds

Low-income people over 60 years old die an average of nine years earlier than high-income older Americans, according to a new study from the National Council on Aging (NCOA) and University of Massachusetts Boston’s LeadingAge LTSS Center, which studies aging. Spotlight spoke recently with Jessica Johnston, senior director of the NCOA’s Center for Economic Well-Being, about the new study. The transcript of that conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You’ve done these types of studies in the past, so why don’t we start with some of the background then talk about these latest results.

Sure. We did this report for the first time in 2023. The Health and Retirement Study data from the University of Michigan that we use gets updated every two years, so the current report looks at the financial health of older adults, 60 and over, between 2018 and 2022.

And you had not looked at mortality before. What made you decide to do that?

Along with our research partners at UMass Boston, we were starting to see some trends and wanted to dig in and see if there really was kind of a connection between health and wealth. And when they looked at the longitudinal data from the HRS study, they found that those that were in the bottom 20% in terms of annual income were likely to die nine years sooner than those who had an income of $120,000 or more.

Were you surprised by that? Did you expect it to be that stark?

I did not. I mean, to think that your income can determine almost a decade of your lifespan is pretty shocking. I don’t know that that’s something that we were expecting, at least for me. I did expect to see some connection. But I certainly was not expecting nine years.

Were you able to get racial and gender breakdowns or geographic breakdowns from this? Or is that not possible?

We didn’t do a gender breakdown, though I do think that is something we could pursue in the future. This is not geographic data but truly a national snapshot, so the HRS dataset doesn’t speak to specific locations.

Any other results from the study that are worth noting?

What I’ve really been thinking a lot about is, typically we release these results around the same time that federal poverty data is released, in September, and this year, once again, older adults were the only age demographic to see an increase in poverty. And we’ve now seen that for three years. In our study, we don’t use federal poverty level data to determine cost of living or people’s financial status. We use the Elder Index, which takes into account things like your rent, utilities and healthcare costs and calculates a more accurate cost of living. According to the Elder Index, a single older adult needs $24,000 a year to cover all of their basic necessities. And yet, the federal poverty line is around $15,000. So, the gap between poverty and being able to cover your basic needs is pretty wide.

And so, a lot of older adults that we are talking about in this report aren’t eligible for benefits because they don’t meet the federal poverty guidelines. What this report really says to me is that there are millions of older adults who we aren’t classifying as living in poverty but are ultimately experiencing it. About 19 million older adults don’t have the income they need to cover their basic living costs according to the Elder Index, but many of those 19 million wouldn’t be eligible for the critical benefits that many older adults living in poverty depend on.

Is there any follow-up planned from this report?

There has been quite a bit of interest in this report and one of the things that I’ve really been trying to advocate for and raise awareness about is the benefits that are really needed for older adults and that older adults need specific social safety nets. When we design programs like SNAP and Medicaid for the general population, we’re designing these programs with the thought that they are temporary safety nets. And yet we know that the circumstances of low-income, older adults typically don’t dramatically change. And so if you are an older adult on SNAP benefits, this is a lifeline. This is not a temporary bridge until you get to a better situation, which might be the case for a younger person who is receiving SNAP benefits.

I’m really trying to call attention to the fact that these benefit programs, SNAP in particular, are not designed for older adults and many older adults that we hear from through our community-based partners are only receiving the federal minimum of SNAP benefits, which is $23 a month. And they have to recertify every six months for potentially a $23 benefit. These are the kind of administratively burdensome programs that are not designed for older adults and that are not creating the safety net that is really required for us to address this gap between the 20% who can afford to age with dignity and the 80% who can’t.

Are there any states that are doing any work on in that regard by are experimenting with using SNAP in a different way?

There are states that increase the minimum in terms of SNAP; Connecticut is one. There are also states that have single applications for multiple benefits and that helps a lot as well. For instance, in Washington State, if you go to apply for a Medicare savings program and you put in your information, it will tell you if you could be eligible for other programs and if you’d like to apply for those.

There are also actually quite a few states that have removed asset limits for Medicare savings programs. That doesn’t necessarily always mean that more older adults will actually be eligible, but it just removes some of the barriers in terms of being able to apply

Any other points about this study that you’d like to make?

The only other point that I would really make is that two thirds of older adults over the age of 70 are likely to experience some sort of financial emergency. So, whether that’s widowhood or the need for long-term care, we know that the vast majority of these older adults can’t afford that emergency. This really is a crisis that doesn’t have solution in sight right now and, and that most older adults will experience.