696 Predictors of Homelessness among Older Adults in New York City Disability, Economic, Human and Social Capital and Stressful Events MARYBETH SHINN, JAMIE GOTTLIEB, JESSICA L. WETT, & AJAY BAHL New York University, USA ARNOLD COHEN & DEBORAH BARON ELLIS The Partnership for the Homeless, USA Abstract We interviewed 61 housed and 79 homeless adults aged 55 and over about disability; economic, human and social capital; and stressful life events prior to becoming homeless. Over half of the homeless group had previously led conventional lives. Human capital, social capital and life events were more important than disability or economic capital in predicting homelessness. The homeless adults were younger, more likely to be male and better educated than housed adults, but had shorter job tenure and fewer social ties. Homeless adults faced multiple, cascading risks, including job loss and housing loss. Implications for prevention are discussed. Journal of Health Psychology Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore www.sagepublications.com Vol 12(5) 696–708 DOI: 10.1177/1359105307080581 AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S . We thank the Partnership for the Homeless for funding interview incentives, the Jacob A. Riis Settlement House for furnishing the comparison group, Marcia Liu for data entry and interviewers. We are especially grateful to respondents, both homeless and housed. This article is based in part on an undergraduate honors thesis by Jamie Gottlieb. C O M P E T I N G I N T E R E S T S : None declared. A D D R E S S . Correspondence should be directed to: MARYBETH SHINN, New York University, 715 Broadway, Room 201, New York, NY 10003, USA. [email: ] Keywords ■ aging ■ disability ■ homelessness ■ life events ■ social capital UNTIL RECENTLY, homelessness among older adults in the United States seemed to be vanquished. In 1973 a book on homeless adults in New York was entitled Old men drunk and sober (Bahr & Caplow, 1973), but by the 1980s attention shifted to ‘the new homeless’: young minority men and families (e.g. New York Commission on the Homeless, 1992). In 1990, adults aged 50–61 used shelter at less than a third the rate, and adults aged 62 and over less than a 15th the rate, of adults aged 18–39 (0.41%, 0.09% and 1.40–1.45% of the population respectively, Culhane & Metraux, 1999). But homelessness among older adults is again on the rise. This study asks why, and what to do about it. The reduction in poverty among adults aged 65 and older in the United States from 35 percent in 1960 to 10 percent in 1995 is widely hailed as an accomplish- ment of Social Security. However, although older people continued to make progress relative to the poverty line until the mid-1990s, progress relative to median non-elderly income stagnated in the 1980s (Engelhardt & Gruber, 2004). Further, the poverty rate for people aged 65 and older is nearly twice as high in New York City as in the nation as.

1. 696
Predictors of Homelessness among Older Adults in New York City
Disability, Economic, Human and Social Capital and Stressful Events
MARYBETH SHINN, JAMIE GOTTLIEB, JESSICA L. WETT, & AJAY BAHL New York
University, USA ARNOLD COHEN & DEBORAH BARON ELLIS The Partnership for the
Homeless, USA
Abstract
We interviewed 61 housed and 79 homeless adults aged 55 and over about disability; economic,
human and social capital; and stressful life events prior to becoming homeless. Over half of the
homeless group had previously led conventional lives. Human capital, social capital and life
events were more important than disability or economic capital in predicting homelessness. The
homeless adults were younger, more likely to be male and better educated than housed adults,
but had shorter job tenure and fewer social ties. Homeless adults faced multiple, cascading risks,
including job loss and housing loss. Implications for prevention are discussed.
Journal of Health Psychology Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi and Singapore www.sagepublications.com Vol 12(5) 696–708 DOI:
10.1177/1359105307080581
AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S . We thank the Partnership for the Homeless for funding
interview incentives, the Jacob A. Riis Settlement House for furnishing the comparison group,
Marcia Liu for data entry and interviewers. We are especially grateful to respondents, both
homeless and housed. This article is based in part on an undergraduate honors thesis by Jamie
Gottlieb.
C O M P E T I N G I N T E R E S T S : None declared.
A D D R E S S . Correspondence should be directed to: MARYBETH SHINN, New York
University, 715 Broadway, Room 201, New York, NY 10003, USA. [email: [email protected] ]
Keywords
â– aging â– disability â– homelessness â– life events â– social capital
UNTIL RECENTLY, homelessness among older adults in the United States seemed to be
vanquished. In 1973 a book on homeless adults in New York was entitled Old men drunk and
sober (Bahr & Caplow, 1973), but by the 1980s attention shifted to ‘the new homeless’:
young minority men and families (e.g. New York Commission on the Homeless, 1992). In 1990,
adults aged 50–61 used shelter at less than a third the rate, and adults aged 62 and over less
than a 15th the rate, of adults aged 18–39 (0.41%, 0.09% and 1.40–1.45% of the population

2. respectively, Culhane & Metraux, 1999). But homelessness among older adults is again on the
rise. This study asks why, and what to do about it.
The reduction in poverty among adults aged 65 and older in the United States from 35 percent in
1960 to 10 percent in 1995 is widely hailed as an accomplish- ment of Social Security. However,
although older people continued to make progress relative to the poverty line until the mid-
1990s, progress relative to median non-elderly income stagnated in the 1980s (Engelhardt &
Gruber, 2004). Further, the poverty rate for people aged 65 and older is nearly twice as high in
New York City as in the nation as a whole (17.7% vs 9.4% in 2004, US Census Bureau
Factfinder, n.d.). Perhaps as a consequence, the age of homeless New Yorkers is creeping up
again. Single adults in New York’s shelter system were an average of five years older in
2002 than in 1988. Those over 40 made up 53 percent of the total in 2002, compared to less than
30 percent in 1988 (New York City Department of Homeless Services, n.d.). By 2005, 13
percent of residents of single adult shelters were 55 and over (M. Schretzman, Associate
Commissioner, NYC Department of Homeless Services, personal communication, October
2005).
It is natural that homeless adults should age along with the overall population, but why might
they be aging faster? One possibility is that individuals once dubbed the ‘new homeless’
remained homeless as they grew older. Cohen suggests that ‘personal risk factors [for
homelessness] may accumulate over a lifetime’ and enculturation to street or shelter may
prolong homelessness, although systemic and programmatic factors also matter (2004, p. 425).
He reports that older homeless men ‘commonly have long histories of homelessness’
whereas homelessness among older women is more often caused by a crisis (2004, p. 428).
However, studies of shelter records indicate that relatively few people are chronically homeless;
most exit from this state (Culhane, Dejowski, Ibanez, Needham, & Macchia, 1994).
Another possibility is that as incomes stagnate and housing costs rise, adverse events may lead
older adults to become homeless for the first time late in life. Indeed, in a cross-national study in
England, Australia and the United States, Crane et al. (2005) found that of older adults who
became homeless within the last two years, two-thirds (four-fifths in the United States) had never
been homeless before. However, by definition, this study did not include adults with long,
continuous histories of homelessness.
The current study has two goals. First, we examine risk factors for homelessness by comparing
homeless and housed but poor adults over the age of 55. Based on prior research with homeless
populations of differ- ent ages, we hypothesize that five classes of factors would differentiate
homeless adults from their housed counterparts. These include disability, economic, human and
social capital and stressful events in the period leading up to homelessness. In order to under-
stand potential causes of homelessness, we tied our assessment to the last year that study
participants spent in conventional housing, that is an apartment or a house. Second, we use
narrative descriptions of respondents’ lives to understand the extent to which homeless older
adults always had tenuous ties to housing or led relatively conventional lives before becoming
homeless in old age.
Disability

3. Numerous studies have found elevated levels of physical health problems, mental illness and
substance abuse among homeless single adults both in the United States (Burt et al., 1999;
Koegel, Burnam, & Baumohl, 1996) and in Europe (Firdion & Marpsat, 2007; Muñoz, Crespo,
& Pérez-Santos, 2005; Philippot, Lecocq, Sempoux, Nachtergael, & Galand, 2007). Gelberg,
Linn and Mayer-Oakes (1990) found more chronic disease and functional disability among
home- less individuals over 50 than among younger homeless people. They and others have
concluded that in terms of health, homeless people over 50 resemble the gen- eral population
over 65 (Cohen, 1999; Gelberg et al., 1990). Substance use and mental illness accounted for 69
percent of hospitalizations among homeless adults in New York City, from 2001–3 compared
with 10 percent in the general population (Kerker et al., 2005), although it is important to realize
that a single person can account for multiple hospitalizations. We expected that high levels of
disability would also predate homelessness.
SHINN ET AL.: PREDICTORS OF HOMELESSNESS AMONG OLDER ADULTS
697
Economic capital
Homeless individuals live in deep poverty, with aver- age incomes in a national survey of only
$367 per month in 1996 (Burt et al., 1999). We hypothesized that poverty would predate
homelessness. In particu- lar we expected that low levels of income (in the job participants held
for the longest period) and high levels of economic stressors (in the last year in conventional
housing) would predict homelessness. In the United States, a home is the primary economic asset
for middle-class adults, but New York is a city of renters, and poor adults are unlikely to own
homes. Thus we examined title to housing, defined as owning a home or having one’s name
on the lease rather than doubling up with others. We also examined housing quality. The
protective effect of a housing subsidy— another form of economic capital—could not be
exam- ined, because comparison group members all had subsidized housing.
Human capital
Human capital refers not to economic assets but to the ability to earn them. We considered
educational attain- ment and work history as measures of human capital, and predicted that low
levels of both would predict homelessness. Caton et al. (2000) found low educa- tional levels to
be a risk factor for homelessness among men in New York.
Social capital
Social capital refers to the social and organizational ties on which individuals can draw for
assistance. Many studies have found that homeless individuals and families lack social supports,
or wear out their welcome with relatives and friends before becoming homeless, although
findings are not uniform (Shinn, Knickman, & Weitzman, 1991). We assessed the extent to
which children, or other relatives and friends, would serve as housing resources, and also
examined respondents’ participation in community-based orga- nizations. We hypothesized
that social capital would be negatively related to homelessness. A number of studies have found

4. that disruptive childhood experi- ences, such as abuse or being in foster care, are asso- ciated
with homelessness (Herman, Susser, Struening, & Link, 1997; Shinn et al., 1991). We assessed
such experiences as negative indicators of social capital but posed no hypothesis, because it was
unclear whether
childhood disruptions would have enduring conse- quences for older adults.
Stressful life events
Crane et al. (2005) describe events or transitions that may serve as ‘triggers’ for
homelessness in older adults such as widowhood, marital breakdown, stop- ping work, evictions
and onset or increased severity of mental illness. (We included the last under disability.) We
hypothesized that stressful life events would be associated with homelessness. However, life
transi- tions may also be common for older adults who remain securely housed. Here, as for all
measures, our strategy was comparative. We asked not simply about the levels of disability,
capital and stressful events among homeless adults during their last period of stable housing, but
about the relative levels in homeless and housed but poor adults, and the extent to which each
factor predicted homelessness in the context of the others.
Method
Participants Participants were 79 homeless and 61 housed adults aged 55 and older. Homeless
adults were recruited from Peter’s Place, the only drop-in center in New York City dedicated
to serving adults 55 and older. Drop-in centers are low-demand settings that provide food, social,
medical and housing services to home- less individuals coming off the street. They are open 24
hours a day, seven days a week. Some participants go to informal night shelters in churches and
return to the drop-in center during the day; others remain on chairs in the drop-in center at night
or return intermit- tently to the street. Peter’s Place often serves older adults wary of the
city’s mixed-age shelter system. Housed respondents were recruited from a settlement house
serving a public housing project in New York City, ensuring that all were low income. Based on
directors’ estimates of attendance at the two agencies during the interview period, response
rates were approximately 82 percent for the homeless adults and 68 percent for the housed
adults.
Procedure Interviewers (undergraduate and graduate psychology students who received
extensive training) visited the drop-in center and settlement house repeatedly over a period of
several months, becoming a familiar
JOURNAL OF HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY 12(5)
698
presence. Respondents, who were paid $20, could sign up for interviews, or were solicited
informally by interviewers. After giving informed consent, partici- pants were interviewed in
English or Spanish in private spaces for about an hour.

5. Two measures were used to assure respondents’ competence to provide data. First, we
included a mea- sure of cognitive competence (Chestnut Health Systems, n.d.), however,
individuals with failing scores were primarily non-native speakers of English and, in the
interviewers’ judgments, difficulties had to do with language rather than memory.
Interviewers also rated the coherence and consistency of the interview. Three interviews with
homeless respondents, one rated as having ‘serious problems of coherence or consistency’,
one terminated by the interviewer when the respondent seemed confused and one broken off by
an agitated respondent were excluded from analysis.
Measures Most measures were tied to a ‘target year’, that is the most recent 12-month
period in which the respondent had lived continuously in conventional housing with- out a move,
in order to understand how events and conditions in this year may have precipitated home-
lessness. The interviewer obtained a housing history to identify the last residence that qualified,
and asked several questions about its location, who else lived there and when and why the
respondent left in order to fix the location in the respondent’s mind. For 59 of 61 comparison
respondents, but none of the homeless respondents, this target year was the 12 months imme-
diately preceding the interview.
Measures of disabilities included physical disabil- ity, mental disability and substance use in the
target year. Physical disability included reports that health problems affected ability to carry out
any of five tasks (e.g. engage in moderate physical activity such as car- rying groceries or
climbing stairs), or hospitalization for a medical problem. Mental disability included reports that
a ‘mental or nervous problem’ affected ‘your ability to do the things you had to do’
or hospi- talization ‘for a nervous problem’. A substance prob- lem included reports of
using marijuana or other drugs weekly, having any of four other symptoms of abuse of alcohol or
drugs from the GAIN–Short Screener (Chestnut Health Systems, n.d., e.g. ‘did you try to
hide that you were using alcohol, marijuana or other drugs’), or staying overnight in a detox
facility.
Measures of economic capital included income for the final year at the longest job the
respondent had held, and economic stressors, title to housing and
building problems during the target year. Income at the longest job was divided by the poverty
threshold for the relevant year, to adjust for inflation. Economic stressors were assessed by an
eight-item scale (based on Pearlin & Schooler, 1978) with high scores indicat- ing high levels of
stressors (Cronbach’s alpha = .90). Items asked about inability to afford necessities (e.g.
‘the kind of food you should have’) and difficulties with finances. Because the items used
different response scales, they were standardized before averag- ing, and the average was again
standardized to make units meaningful. Title to housing assessed whether the respondent owned
a residence or was named on a rental lease. A count of four serious building problems (e.g. lack
of heat for a week or more in winter, rats; Shinn et al., 1998) indexed housing quality.
Measures of human capital included receipt of a high school (or equivalency) diploma and length
of the longest job the respondent had ever held. Measures of social capital included a count of six
dis- ruptive events in youth such as living in foster care, or being physically abused, reported by
the respondent before age 18 (Shinn et al., 1991), and three adult measures: child housing

6. resource indicated that the respondent had at least one child who would allow the respondent to
stay with him or her. Relative/friend housing resource indicated that the respondent had a friend
or a relative who would allow this. Organiza- tional ties were scored on a three-point scale where
0 indicated no organizational affiliations in the target year; 1 indicated attendance at a place of
worship, community or senior center, or other club or regular meeting (excluding the agencies
where we sampled respondents) and 2 indicated that someone would ask about a respondent who
missed a meeting or did not go for a long time.
Stressful life events was a count of the number out of 11 events the respondent experienced
during the target year. Events were related to housing (eviction, being told to leave), employment
(job loss), relation- ships (divorce, ceasing to live with a partner, spouse or family member’s
death or illness) and criminal victim- ization or involvement (self or family member arrested or
jailed).
After the interview, the interviewer wrote a ‘thumbnail sketch’ of the respondent’s life
and, for homeless respondents, the circumstances that led to housing loss. The interviewer also
rated the coher- ence and consistency of the interview, and the extent to which homeless
respondents had a ‘con- ventional life’ in terms of housing and employment prior to
becoming homeless. To assure consistency
SHINN ET AL.: PREDICTORS OF HOMELESSNESS AMONG OLDER ADULTS
699
in the latter ratings, two experienced interviewers re-read the full set of thumbnail sketches for
homeless respondents, and rated respondents again, focusing on whether the respondent had a
stable lifestyle for a decade or more before becoming homeless. Agreement, corrected for chance
(kappa) between the two sets of ratings was .75; disagreements were resolved by consensus.
Missing data Thirty-five respondents (25%) were unable to recall their income for the final year
at their longest job, and we doubted the accuracy of additional reports. Thus we use this variable
descriptively, but exclude it from regression analyses. No other variable was missing data for
more than 3 percent of cases, and missing data were scattered. We used the Expectation
Maximization method, SPSS version 14.0, to impute missing values for regression analyses
(excluding income from the data used for imputation).
Results
Description of sample Table 1 shows the demographic characteristics of homeless and housed
respondents as of the time of the interview. Housed respondents were approximately seven years
older (and 13 years older during the ‘tar- get year’ in which both groups were in
conventional housing, see Table 2). They were also much more likely to be female and Black,
and marginally less likely to be foreign born. Few respondents in either group were currently
married. Housed respondents were more likely to be widowed, and homeless respon- dents more
likely never to have married.

7. Surprisingly, the homeless respondents were sub- stantially better educated than the housed
comparison group. Just under half of the housed group had com- pleted high school, and only 13
percent had any post- high school education, whereas three-quarters of the homeless group had
completed high school and
JOURNAL OF HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY 12(5)
700
Table 1. Descriptive characteristics of homeless and housed groups
Homeless group Housed group Test of difference (N = 79) (N = 61) (t or χ²)
Age, years, mean (SD) 63.6 (7.6) 70.5 (7.4) 6.88*** Female, % 19 77 49.74*** Race/ethnicity,
% 22.26***
Blacka 41 75 Latino 13 13 White 33 8 Other 14 3
Foreign birth % 30 17 3.57t
Marital status, % 30.19*** Married 4 13 Separated 17 16 Divorced 23 15 Widowed 19 49 Single
(never married) 37 7
Education, % 18.55** 8th grade or below 12 21 9th to 11th grade 14 30 Completed high school
31 36 Some college 27 8 College graduate 10 2 Post-graduate 6 3
Income/poverty line 4.1 (2.5) 2.6 (1.9) 3.51** (at end of longest job)b
tp < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001 a Mostly African-American, but also African and
Caribbean b Excluded from regression analyses due to 25 percent missing data
43 percent had some higher education. Reported jobs (including teacher, engineer, army officer
and many business posts) were consistent with these educations. The homeless group also
reported higher incomes at their longest job.
Prediction of homelessness We predicted homelessness from age (as of the target year), gender
and measures of disability; economic, human and social capital; and stressful life events. Table 2
shows univariate relationships between variables in each domain and homelessness. Taken one at
a time, only physical disability, building problems and disrup- tive events in youth failed to
predict homelessness at p < .05.
Table 2 also shows the adjusted odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for a parsimonious
multivariate
model, arrived at by backwards elimination: non- significant predictors were removed, one at a
time, from a full model with all the predictors in the table, until only variables that were related

8. to homelessness at p < .05 remained. To check whether the order of removal mattered, each
excluded variable was added back to this parsimonious model individually; none of the excluded
variables was related to homelessness at p < .10.1 The adjusted odds ratio is the amount by
which the odds of homelessness are multiplied for each unit increase in the predictor variable,
controlling for other variables in the model. For dichotomous vari- ables (such as gender or high
school education) it is simply the amount by which the odds are multiplied for women, or for
high school graduates. For variables measured in years, such as age or length of longest job, it is
the amount by which the odds are multiplied for
SHINN ET AL.: PREDICTORS OF HOMELESSNESS AMONG OLDER ADULTS
701
Table 2. Predictors of homelessness along with odds ratios for logistic regression model
predicting homelessness from life history and conditions in last year in conventional housing
(target year)
Adjusted odds ratio Homeless group Housed group (95% confidence
Predictor: mean (with SD) or proportion (N = 79) (N = 61) interval)b
Demographics Age during target year 57.6 (10.3) 70.5 (7.4)*** 0.84 (0.74, 0.94) Female .19
.77*** 0.01 (0.00, 0.12)
Disability in target year Physical disability .42 .57t
Mental disability .24 .08* Substance problem .34 .05***
Economic capital in target year Economic stressors (Z-score) 0.2 (1.1) -0.3 (0.7)** Housing title
.69 .89** # Building problems (out of 4) 0.6 (0.9) 0.6 (0.9)
Human capital High school or GED .74 .49** 38.52 (2.29, 648.68) Length of longest job (years)
10.8 (8.2) 17.1 (10.3)*** 0.81 (0.71, 0.93)
Social capital # Disruptive events in youth 0.8 (1.1) 0.6 (1.1) Child housing resource .33 .85***
0.08 (0.01, 0.59) Relative/friend housing resource .25 .79*** 0.03 (0.00, 0.28) Organizational
ties, mean (0–2 scale) 1.0 (0.9) 1.7 (0.6)***
Stressful life events in target year # of events 1.0 (1.1) 0.4 (0.6)*** Apartment or job lossa .48
.02*** 31.02 (1.99, 483.68)
tp < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001 in univariate analyses predicting homelessness a
Apartment or job loss in the target year was substituted, post hoc, for full index of stressful life
events. The substitution did not change the significance of other predictors b Odds ratios are
from the parsimonious model including all variables where odds ratios are given. No other
variable reached significance at p < .10 in the context of this basic set

9. each year—a five-year increase in age multiplied the odds of homelessness by (.84)5 or .42. If
the confidence interval includes 1, the variable is not significant (mul- tiplying by 1 yields no
change). Because of the rela- tively small sample size, only rather substantial effects reached
statistical significance.
In terms of demographic variables, homeless indi- viduals were younger and more likely to be
male than housed individuals, and both these variables remained significant in the context of all
other variables.
No form of disability was a significant predictor of homelessness in the context of other
variables. The adjusted odds ratios when each variable was added to the parsimonious model
were 1.18 for physical dis- ability and 1.08 for mental disability, suggesting that these forms of
disability were not important to home- lessness. However, the confidence intervals were quite
broad: (0.13, 10.54) for physical disability and (0.12, 9.38) for mental disability, so that neither
large increases in the odds of homelessness nor large decreases could be ruled out. In the case of
substance problems the adjusted odds ratio was substantial (9.13), suggesting that substance
abuse could well be important to homelessness in this age group, but the broad confidence
interval (0.58, 145.05), made it impossible to specify this association. (Both sub- stance abuse
and homelessness were correlated with younger age and male gender.) No indicator of eco-
nomic capital contributed to the final model, although economic stressors and title to housing
were signifi- cant taking one variable at a time. Of these, title to housing seemed more likely to
be important, with an adjusted odds ratio (when added to the parsimonious model) of 7.98, but a
very broad confidence interval (0.54, 118.05). Both groups experienced relatively high levels of
economic stressors in the target year, e.g. 38 percent of homeless and 31 percent of housed adults
reported not having enough money to afford the kind of food they should have at least once in a
while. Although we could not examine the association of housing subsidies with homelessness,
because the comparison group was recruited from subsidized public housing, only 24 percent of
homeless respon- dents had received a housing subsidy in their last year in stable housing.
The two indicators of human capital had opposite relationships to homelessness. As already
noted, educational attainment was positively associated with homelessness, but length of the
longest job was negatively associated. Housed individuals had worked over six years longer, on
average, at the longest job they had held, but the homeless group
also had substantial work histories, with tenure at the longest job averaging almost 11 years.
Two measures of social capital were also signifi- cant predictors of homelessness controlling for
other variables. Housed respondents were much more likely than homeless respondents to report
having a child or another relative or friend who would house them. Nevertheless, a third of
homeless respondents said a child would allow them to stay, and a quarter said someone else
would do so. Why, then, were they homeless? Respondents commonly reported contentious
relationships with someone in the house- hold, not wanting to impose or wanting to remain
independent (14–19 respondents each). Other network members lived far away, had not been
in touch with the respondent for years, lived in crowded circum- stances or were in the military
or institutional settings (5–9 respondents each). (Respondents could offer dif- ferent reasons
for different network members.)

10. Although homeless individuals reported over twice as many stressful life events in their last year
in con- ventional housing as did housed respondents, the overall index of life events did not
contribute to the prediction of homelessness, controlling for other vari- ables. A post hoc
examination of specific life events showed that homeless respondents were far more likely than
housed respondents to report events relat- ing to loss of housing or jobs during their last year in
conventional housing: 25 percent had been evicted, 8 percent had been asked to leave by
someone they were staying with and 22 percent had lost a job. Altogether, 48 percent of
homeless but only 2 percent of housed respondents had experienced one or more of these events
in their last year in conventional hous- ing. The average number of other events reported by the
two groups (0.43 for homeless, 0.42 for housed) was virtually identical. An indicator that the
respon- dent had lost an apartment or a job in the year before becoming homeless, when
substituted for the life events index in the logistic regression analysis, was highly significant,
increasing the odds of homeless- ness by a factor of 31 (with broad confidence bounds). No other
variable changed in significance as a result. The odds ratios and confidence intervals in Table 2
are from the equation using the indicator of apartment or job loss.
Conventional lives and qualitative analyses We coded 42 or 53 percent of the 79 homeless
respondents as having conventional lives prior to becoming homeless. This designation did not
mean
JOURNAL OF HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY 12(5)
702
that individuals had no problems, simply that they managed to keep conventional housing and
jobs for extended periods of time prior to becoming home- less late in life.
Table 3 shows differences between the homeless respondents coded as having more conventional
and less conventional lives. The two groups were nearly the same age, but those with less
conventional lives were 15 years younger on average, when they first became homeless, were
four times as likely to have had multiple bouts of homelessness and, based on the thumbnail
sketches, often had tenuous ties to housing throughout adulthood. The less conventional group
was twice as likely to have had a substance problem in the target year and twice as likely to have
experi- enced disruptive events in childhood. The more con- ventional group was more likely to
have graduated from high school, and had held their longest job for almost twice as long, on
average. They were also more likely to report organizational ties and that a child would allow
them to stay. Although the groups did not differ on overall stressful life events or the combined
index of apartment and job loss, the less conventional group was more likely to have lost a job
and the more conventional group more likely to have lost housing during the target year. The
groups did not differ on any other variables in Tables 1 and 2.
In summary, the less conventional group fit the pro- file of individuals with long histories of
homelessness or housing instability and accumulated risk; the more conventional group did not.
Why, then, did the latter group become homeless in old age? Summaries of the thumbnail
sketches for five more conventional respondents give qualitative answers.

11. José (not his real name), age 77, graduated from college in Cuba, and came to the United
States, where he owned a furniture business and raised eight chil- dren, before retiring and
selling the business at age 72. Although he thought that he could live on his pension, he was soon
unable to afford the rent for his long-time apartment, and was evicted. José is close to his chil-
dren, but says that they are enjoying their lives and he does not want to be a burden to them, or a
‘pain in the neck’.
Bill, age 74, graduated from high school and lived in the same apartment for 50 years until age
68, when he developed a crippling physical illness which pre- vented him from working or living
alone. He thus lost the construction job he had held for 15 years and was unable to afford his
rent. He stayed with a nephew for two years and a sister for one year; but became home- less
after ‘using up’ these social resources.
James, age 68, came to New York from a southern state in the 1960s. He had some college
education,
SHINN ET AL.: PREDICTORS OF HOMELESSNESS AMONG OLDER ADULTS
703
Table 3. Differences between homeless individuals with more and less conventional lives
Less conventional More conventional Test of difference Characteristic: mean (SD) or proportion
(N = 37) (N = 42) (t or χ²)
History of homelessness Age at interview 62.5 (6.6) 64.7 (8.4) 1.30 Age first homeless 44.2
(15.0) 59.4 (10.2) 5.06*** Multiple bouts of homelessness .70 .17 22.62***
Disability in target year Substance problem .49 .21 6.56*
Human capital High School or GED .62 .85 5.59* Length of longest job (years) 7.4 (6.1) 13.7
(8.8) 3.66***
Social capital # Disruptive events in youth 1.2 (1.3) 0.5 (0.8) 2.49* Child housing resource .19
.45 6.36* Organizational ties, mean (0–2 scale) 0.8 (0.9) 1.2 (0.8) 2.16*
Stressful life events in target year Evicted or asked to leave .19 .45 6.36* Job loss .35 .10 7.89**
*p < .05; ** p< .01; *** p< .001 The groups did not differ on gender, race, foreign birth, marital
status, income relative to poverty line, mental or physical health, economic stressors, title to
housing, building problems, relative/friend housing resource or the full index of stressful events
and owned a grocery store, from which he retired at age 67. A year later, he lost his apartment in
a fire. The City placed him in a single-room occupancy hotel, which he left because it was dirty
and infested with roaches. Although he could stay with either of his two children, he wants to get
back on his feet in a place of his own.

12. Bob, age 58, is a Vietnam veteran with some college education who was diagnosed with
generalized anxi- ety disorder, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but
nevertheless earned $70,000 a year in a management position for a bank. He became homeless at
age 56 when the girlfriend with whom he had lived for seven years left. Two months later he left
his job and lacked money to pay the rent. He had problems with both gambling and alcohol
abuse, and reported stays in detox and in a hospital for both med- ical and nervous problems in
that year.
Susan, age 86, became homeless at age 74 when she was evicted from the apartment where she
had lived for 29 years for hoarding. She never married and had no children. She had some
college education and had served in the military, done fundraising for a social service agency and
worked as assistant public- ity director for a large arts organization, among other jobs. After an
injury restricted her ability to work, she began to manage a thrift shop. She brought so many
items home that it created a fire hazard. Susan has three elderly siblings who are in nursing
homes or living with children and unable to help her.
These case studies suggest that the quantitative measures were sometimes too specific to capture
respondents’ situations. Neither James, whose apart- ment burned down, nor Bob, who could
not afford the rent after his girlfriend left, reported being evicted or asked to leave by someone
they were stay- ing with. Other ‘conventional’ respondents reported losing their housing in
ways our stressful event inventory did not capture (e.g. a flood, a death of the primary tenant, a
shooting, a move that did not work out). No case-study respondent reported losing a job in the
target year, although Bill and Susan lost jobs earlier, due to illness and injury, and Bob left work
for unspecified reasons that may have been related to mental disability.
The case studies also show that it is typically the confluence of multiple risk factors or a cascade
of events that make someone homeless, rather than just one. Susan was coded as having both a
physical and a mental health problem in her last year in con- ventional housing, no child, friend
or relative hous- ing resources and a relatively short period of five
years in her longest job (she held many jobs over the years). None the less, she remained housed
until age 74, living in her last apartment for 29 years.
Based on the qualitative findings that homeless respondents experienced multiple risk factors, we
did a final post hoc analysis. For each respondent we counted the number of 12 risk factors:
physical dis- ability; mental disability; substance problem; eco- nomic stressors above the sample
mean; lack of title to housing; longest job of less than 10 years; any dis- ruptive event in youth;
lack of child housing resource; lack of relative/friend housing resource; lack of organizational
ties; job loss in target year; and housing loss in target year. On average, homeless individuals had
three more risk factors than did housed individuals (homeless M = 4.97, SD = 1.97; housed M =
2.05, SD = 1.51, t(138) = 9.60, p < .001). Among housed respondents, 67 percent had 0–2 risk
factors and none had more than six. Among homeless respondents, only 10 percent had 0–2
risk factors, and 25 percent had 7–10. The only homeless respon- dent with no identifiable risk
factors described giving everything up and taking to the street after his wife died, but his
example shows the value of a compara- tive approach. As Table 1 shows, widowhood was far
more common in the housed sample.

13. Discussion
Conventional lives Perhaps the most interesting finding to emerge from the study is that over
half of the homeless respon- dents lived relatively conventional lives, typically involving long
periods of employment and residen- tial stability before becoming homeless at an aver- age age
of 59. Multiple events shifted people who were unsupported by family and society from these
conventional lives into homelessness. Just under half of the homeless respondents had longer
histo- ries of instability, more in line with earlier findings (e.g. Cohen, 2004). The dividing line
between these groups is a fuzzy one—the slide into homelessness was often slow, with lives
looking less conventional as time went on.
Predictors of homelessness The quantitative analyses isolated factors that differen- tiated the
entire group of homeless adults from poor adults who remained housed. Key predictors were
male gender, younger age, higher levels of education, shorter tenure in the longest job held, loss
of an
JOURNAL OF HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY 12(5)
704
apartment or job while in conventional housing and lack of children or other ties who would
provide hous- ing. Because confidence intervals were often broad, the study should not be
interpreted as providing evi- dence against the contributions of other factors to homelessness. In
particular, substance problems and title to housing may play important roles. The sam- pling
design, in which all housed respondents were drawn from public housing, meant that the role of
housing subsidies in protecting against homelessness could not be examined, despite their
scarcity in the homeless group and importance to other populations in the same city (Shinn et al.,
1998).
Demographic differences between groups were unsurprising. Studies of single homeless adults
(e.g. Burt et al., 1999) typically find many more men than women whereas differential mortality
leads to larger numbers of women than men among older adults generally. Very old adults may
not be able to survive on the street (Gelberg et al., 1990). Adults who are too old to readily gain
employment if they lose jobs but who are too young to be eligible for social secu- rity benefits
may be at special risk as Okamoto (2007) also found in Japan. As in national studies (e.g. Burt et
al., 1999), there were relatively more Black respondents in the homeless group than in New York
City, but this was even truer of the comparison group.
More surprisingly, health and disability did not play a statistically significant role in predicting
homelessness, although confidence intervals were broad, so that the data cannot rule out
important asso- ciations, especially for substance abuse. Health may have deteriorated after
individuals became homeless, consistent with other literature (e.g. Burt et al., 1999; Cohen,
1999; Firdion & Marpsat, 2007; Gelberg et al., 1990; Muñoz et al., 2005; Philippot et al.,
2007). Also, the qualitative data suggest that disability sometimes precipitated other, more
proximal causes of homelessness, and substance abuse was more common among the homeless
adults with less con- ventional lives. Crane et al. (2005) also found that newly homeless older

14. adults reported housing and relationship problems as more direct antecedents of homelessness
than physical or mental health or sub- stance problems, which were sometimes ‘predispos- ing
or contributory’.
Sample biases may have affected reported health. Adults with physical disabilities or dementia
may be more likely to be in institutional settings, and those with substance problems or paranoia
may be less likely to come into a drop-in center than to stay on the street. Interviewers and staff
believed that poten-
tial homeless respondents who were not interviewed had more cognitive problems and mental
illness than those who were, and the three homeless respondents whose interviews were not
usable were more agitated or less coherent than those whose interviews were analyzed. On the
other hand, Gelberg et al. (1990) found older homeless adults less likely than younger ones to
have psychotic symptoms, and no more likely to have memory loss.
Economic capital also seemed relatively unimpor- tant. No predictors were significant, although
having title to housing could not be ruled out as a protective factor. Levels of economic stressors
were high for both groups, but may not have threatened homeless- ness for the comparison group
whose public housing rents were tied to income.
The high levels of educational-level attainment among homeless respondents, and their rates of
par- ticipation in college and post-graduate education, were surprising. Nor did the higher
education levels of homeless adults with conventional than with unconventional lives protect
them from housing loss. The other indicator of human capital, tenure in the longest job a
respondent had held, favored the housed group, as expected. Even so, homeless respondents
averaged 10.8 years and those with conventional lives averaged 13.7 years in their longest jobs.
We did not assess the total number of years that respondents worked, but it is clear that many
had a series of responsible and often well-paid jobs commensurate with their educational levels.
Social ties, especially ties to children who would allow the respondent to stay with them, were an
important protective factor. Organizational ties (which were not explicitly tied to housing) were
less important. The number of homeless individuals who declined opportunities to stay with
children or relatives may suggest that they overestimated these resources. In some cases, such as
Bill’s, respon- dents had stayed with others and had worn out their welcome. (Note that 11
percent of the housed sample did not have title to housing, but were dou- bled up with others
who may have protected them from homelessness.)
It is also interesting that disruptive experiences in childhood, which have been robust predictors
of homelessness in younger samples (e.g. Herman et al., 1997), were not important after
controlling for other variables here. Such disruptive childhood experiences were relatively high
among homeless adults with unconventional lives, suggesting that they may play an indirect role,
by setting processes
SHINN ET AL.: PREDICTORS OF HOMELESSNESS AMONG OLDER ADULTS
705

15. in motion that lead to more proximal predictors of homelessness.
Stressful life events during the last year in conven- tional housing did not predict homelessness,
but events that indicated loss of resources (eviction, being asked to leave, job loss) did. This post
hoc selection of events that best differentiated the groups should be replicated. It is also possible
that the low levels of such events in the comparison group is an artifact. Housed individuals had
been living in their present apartment in public housing for a median of 26 years, and were
largely retired (only 21 percent of the comparison group, compared to 53 percent of the homeless
group had been employed since 2000, χ²(1, n = 140) = 15.2, p < .001). Thus they were
unlikely to have lost jobs or housing in the past year. Nevertheless, it is plausible that events that
affected access to housing resources and income would be particularly important to
homelessness (see similar findings by Okamoto, 2007).
Limitations The study has several limitations. Ideally, we would compare a random sample of
homeless individuals over the age of 55 with a random sample of poor adults of the same age.
Because Peter’s Place is the only drop-in center for older adults in New York City, the
homeless sample is not a bad one, but may still differ from samples drawn from institutions or
the street. The comparison sample is more limited because all had access to subsidized housing
and were recruited at a settlement house, so they were unlikely to be socially isolated.
Focusing the interview on the last year in stable housing (the target year) was both a strength and
lim- itation of the study. Collecting information on respon- dents’ circumstances prior to
homelessness (or the most recent instance of homelessness, for respondents with multiple bouts)
justified considering these cir- cumstances as predictors rather than consequences of
homelessness, and may account for differences between this study and others with respect to
health. However, retrospective recall of past events may mag- nify biases inherent in self-report
data and the longer time lag for homeless than for housed respondents may have led to
differential recall in the two groups. Future research might have housed respondents recall a
period three years in the past (the median time lag for homeless respondents). Focusing on a year
in stable housing also minimized reporting of events incom- patible with such housing, such as
imprisonment. In
addition to focusing on the last period in stable hous- ing, future research might inquire about
earlier events.
Implications for prevention Despite these limitations, this study provides useful guidance for
preventing homelessness among older adults, and challenges some assumptions that might be
drawn from considering only the circumstances of people who are currently homeless. The
analysis of health and disability suggests that efforts to provide more health services, however
valuable on other grounds, may do little to prevent homelessness. Rather, the analysis of stressful
life events suggests that efforts to prevent homelessness late in life should target those who lose
jobs or housing for any reason. Cohen (1999) found that 80 percent of older homeless men
wanted to be employed and 56 percent had been continually looking for work. Over half of the
home- less respondents in our sample had recent work histo- ries. Age discrimination in
employment is illegal in the United States, although laws are not always enforced. Older workers
can face difficulties finding new work if they are laid off, or if illness or injury requires a period

16. of unemployment or a change in activity. Providing jobs for adults aged 50–64, who do not
qualify for entitlements available to older adults, could prevent some homelessness (Cohen,
1999).
Older adults and those with disabilities should be helped to apply for available income supports.
However, housing costs put even adults who work full time at risk of homelessness, and place
unsubsidized housing out of reach for people receiving disability benefits. The fair market rent
for a one-bedroom apartment in New York City during the study was $1003 per month—more
than the entire after-tax income of a full-time minimum wage worker (National Low Income
Housing Coalition, 2005), and much more than such a person would receive in retire- ment.
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for dis- abled individuals was only $666 per month.
Thus, rent subsidies are important supports for older adults, but in our study, only one-quarter of
respondents on the verge of homelessness received one. Both general subsidies (e.g. Section 8)
and those targeted to older adults (e.g. Section 202) should be expanded. New York’s Senior
Citizens Rent Increase Exemption Program, which exempts low-income senior citizens from
increases in rent by giving landlords reductions in property taxes, is an entitlement, but should be
publicized more broadly and extended to subsidize base rents (not
JOURNAL OF HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY 12(5)
706
just increases). New York City currently offers legal help to prevent eviction, but many older
adults are unaware of their rights and do not access these programs. Additional inexpensive
housing options, such as clean, safe single-room occupancy hotels for seniors, could also reduce
homelessness.
Efforts might also focus on adults who lack family, especially children who would take them in.
Social policy cannot change social ties, but it can provide in-home services to allow older people
to remain independent, legal and other forms of advo- cacy with housing providers and access to
benefits that might substitute for social resources.
Note
1. To check the robustness of this model, we added race (Black vs other) as a control; no variable
changed significance at p<.05, but confidence intervals were broader. Race itself was not a sig-
nificant predictor.
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Author biographies
MARYBETH SHINN is Professor of Applied Psychology and Public Policy in the Steinhardt
School of Culture, Education and Human Development and Wagner School of Public Service at
New York University.
JAMIE GOTTLIEB is a first-year Distinguished Public Interest Scholar at Seton Hall School of
Law. She graduated with honors from New York University in 2006 with a BA in Psychology.
JESSICA WETT received her BA in Psychology from New York University in 2006. She plans
a career in social work.
AJAY BAHL is an aspiring psychiatrist who will graduate from NYU with a Psychology major
in spring 2007. He hopes to pursue a Masters in Bioethics before attending medical school.
ARNOLD S. COHEN is President and CEO of the Partnership for the Homeless, which offers
services, research and education to end homelessness. He worked previously as a public interest
attorney.
DEBORAH BARON ELLIS, LCSW is Director of Older Adult Services at The Partnership for
the Homeless. She is also director of Peter’s Place, a multi-service center for homeless older
adults.
338
Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services | www.familiesinsociety.org |
Copyright 2005 Alliance for Children and Families
The passage of the Social Security Act has been heralded as one of the United State’s
greatest policy successes. However, the current focus is less on preserving Social
Security’s social welfare benefits for all workers and more on its long-term financing and
maximizing individual ben- efits, which reflects a difference in the fundamental values
underlying Social Security. This shift is most vividly illus- trated by President Bush’s
decision to make the privatiza- tion of Social Security for younger workers a central focus of his
second-term domestic agenda. Yet Social Security is indeed the safety net for many older adults,
especially women and people of color. It is credited with removing more individuals from
poverty than all other governmental programs combined. The more than threefold decline in

20. poverty among the older population over a 40-year period is due largely to Social Security. In
1959, the poverty rate among adults age 65 and older was 35.9% compared with 10.2% today
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2001, 2004a ). Yet even with this policy success, approximately 3.6
million older Americans still fell below the official federal poverty line in 2003, and an
additional 2.2 million older adults were classi- fied as near poor (income between the poverty
level and 125% of this level; U.S. Census Bureau, 2004a). A dispro- portionate number of these
older Americans living in poverty are women. Indeed, the stark reality is that almost 70% of poor
older adults are women, in particular women of color and those older than 85 years and living
alone (Fitzpatrick & Entmacher, 2000).
Reducing Poverty Among Older Women: Social Security Reform and Gender Equity Judith G.
Gonyea & Nancy R. Hooyman
ABSTRACT
The authors document the higher poverty rate of older women, especially women of color, com-
pared with older men—a pattern created and maintained by the intersection of the structural
factors of age, race, and marital status. They then review how the U.S. Social Security program
generally benefits older women and reduces their late-life economic vulnerability. A persistent
gender inequity, however, is that women are more likely to disrupt their paid employment to
meet family care responsibilities, which may increase the number of zero-earnings years and
reduce the amount paid into Social Security. Current proposals to privatize the Social Security
system are critiqued in terms of their gender inequities. Three relatively revenue-neutral propos-
als that could increase Social Security’s protection against poverty and differentially affect
low-
income women are briefly discussed.
DIVERSITY
This article is part of “The Future of Social Work With Older Adults,― a special issue of
Families in Society with guest editor Carol Austin. www.familiesinsociety.org
Gonyea & Hooyman | Reducing Poverty Among Older Women: Social Security Reform and
Gender Equity
339

21. As the nation’s older population has continued to grow, along with a dramatically increasing
federal deficit, conflict- ing viewpoints have emerged regarding public or collective
responsibility for income security in old age. Moreover, the level of this debate has intensified
with the growing realiza- tion that members of the baby boomer generation will soon begin to
enter the ranks of the 65-plus population. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2030, the time
at which the youngest members of the baby boomer generation will turn 65, the percentage of the
older population will reach 20% (i.e., 1 of every 5 Americans; U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). Much
of the current debate about privatizing Social Security has, therefore, been framed around the
program’s financial solvency and returns on individual investment. Less atten- tion has been
focused on the inadequacies of Social Security to protect low-income individuals from moving
into poverty in old age. However, both issues—the long-term fis- cal balance and the
antipoverty effectiveness of Social Security—are critical to promoting older women’s eco-
nomic security.
We begin with an examination of the experience of poverty among older Americans. We not
only highlight gender differences in the risk of late-life poverty but also examine how the
poverty risk varies within the female pop- ulation based on structural characteristics such as age,
socioeconomic class, race, and marital status. The ways in which women’s domestic and
labor force roles contribute to their late-life economic vulnerability and the salience of Social
Security to their lives are explored. Current propos- als to privatize Social Security are critiqued
in terms of their gender inequities. In contrast, we argue for both the pro- tection of Social
Security’s core principles and expansion of its antipoverty protection.
The Differential Risk of Poverty in Old Age
Lack of attention to the plight of older adults who are liv- ing in poverty may reflect a growing
societal view that older adults are faring better financially relative to other age groups in the
United States, particularly children. As noted, the poverty rate for persons 65 and older was
10.2% in 2003, which is lower than the 10.8% rate for working age adults and the 17.6% rate for
children (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004a). It is increasingly recognized, however, that the annual
cross-sectional poverty statistics produced by the Current Population Survey (CPS) do not
present a com- plete picture of the economic status of older Americans (Wu, 2003). Using
longitudinal data from the national Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), for example, Wu
(2003) tracked the poverty status of the same individuals from 1981 to 1992.
To explore the phenomenon of persistent poverty, Wu asked two important questions: (a) Do
older persons face a greater risk than younger persons in falling into poverty for a long period,
and (b) Do older adults compared with
young adults experience more difficulty escaping from poverty after they enter it? His findings
reveal that the poverty experience does, in fact, vary by life stage. During a 5-year period
(1988–1992), 24.3% of the 65-plus popula- tion experienced poverty for at least 1 year and
5.6% were poor for all 5 years; in contrast, 20.1% of the under-65 pop- ulation were poor for at
least 1 year and only 3.6% lived in poverty throughout the 5 years. During the 12-year period
(1981–1992), only 35.2% of the 65-plus population who spent 1 year in poverty escaped from
economic hardship compared with 40.3% of the under-65 population. Wu concluded that “the

22. majority of older adults who spent more than four consecutive years in poverty will stay in
poverty for a long time, and some of them will remain poor until death― (2003).
The PSID longitudinal data reinforce a finding consis- tently documented in the CPS cross-
sectional data: Women are at a much greater risk of falling into poverty in later life than men.
From 1998 to 1992, 27.8% of older women expe- rienced at least 1 year of poverty compared
with 17.6% of men (Wu, 2003). In fact, analysis of the CPS data on the percentage of older
Americans living in poverty by age, gender, race, and Hispanic origin dramatically underscores
the greater vulnerability of women of color.
As reflected in Table 1, approximately 25% of older African American or Hispanic women now
live below the federal poverty level. Marriage often protects women against experiencing
poverty in old age. Whereas less than 5% of older married women face poverty, as shown in
Table 2, 17% of unmarried older women are poor (Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related
Statistics, 2002; Older Women’s League, 2003).
Women’s Economic Vulnerability Across the Life Course
The difference in women’s greater economically vulnerabil- ity in old age compared with
men’s is largely a consequence
TABLE 1. Percentage of Older U.S. Adults Living in Poverty, by Age, Gender, Race and
Hispanic Origin in 2001
TOTAL WHITE BLACK HISPANIC ORIGIN a
Sex and Age Both Sexes
65 to 74 years 9.2 7.8 20.2 21.8
75 and older 11.2 10.2 24.2 22.0
Males
65 to 74 years 6.8 5.7 14.3 17.5
75 and older 7.3 6.4 18.1 19.4
Females
65 to 74 years 11.2 9.6 24.5 25.0
75 and older 13.6 12.5 28.3 23.7 aHispanic can be of any race. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics and Bureau of the Census. Current Population Series, Annual Demographic Survey
March 2001 Supplement. Table 1.
http://ferret.bls.census.gov/macro/032002/pov/new01_001.htm

23. FAMILIES IN SOCIETY | Volume 86, No. 3
340
of the domestic division of labor and women’s position in the labor market. Exploring the
linkages among the phases of the life course, rather than their distinctiveness, reveals how
feminization of poverty occurs in old age. Although more women have entered the labor force in
the last several decades, their wages, even for workers with the greatest employment effort,
continue to lag behind those of men who are working full time and year-round. One important
reason for this earnings gap is gender segregation in the labor market (i.e., the division into
traditional women’s jobs and men’s jobs). In 2003, a gender-based comparison of fully
engaged workers (e.g., continuous, full-time employ- ment) revealed that women earn, on
average 75.5 cents for every dollar earned by men (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004b).
The measurement of an annual male–female wage gap (similar to the annual poverty statistic)
does not, however, offer a complete picture of the gender-based wage differen- tial. Using the
PSID to track the same men and women across a 15-year period, Rose and Hartman (2004)
found that prime-age (26–59 years) employed women earned only 38% of that of prime-age
men. The long-term effects of this earning differential are large and can be devastating:
Across the fifteen years of the study, the prime age
working woman earned only $273,592 while the aver-
age working man earned $722,693 (in 1999 dollars).
This gap of 62% is more than twice as large as the
23% gap commonly reported. (Rose & Hartman
2004, p. iii)
Moreover, the gender-based division of domestic responsibilities results in women, more often
than men, reducing their time in the paid labor force in order to take on child and elder care and
household management. Across the 15-year time span, Rose and Hartman found that slightly
more than half (52%) of women had at least 1 calendar year without any earnings compared with
just 16% of men. Similarly, women are more than twice as likely as men to work part time (i.e.,
fewer than 25 hr per week). In 2002, approximately 25% of employed women worked part-time
compared with 11% of employed men (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2003). The long-term
earnings data underscore that women’s time spent performing fam- ily care often profoundly
limits their economic resources in later life. In fact, motherhood has been identified as the sin-
gle greatest risk factor for poverty in old age (Rappaport,
2004). Finally, women’s longer average life expectancy compared with men’s means that
they may be required to stretch more limited financial resources over a greater number of years.
This pattern is also true of married women who outlive their spouses. More than half (59%) of

24. women enter their later years of life not married, even if they once were; as indicated in Table 2,
these women face a fourfold greater chance of being poor (Administration on Aging, 2002).
The Importance of Social Security to Older Women’s Lives
Social Security is a near-universal old age social insurance program; 9 of every 10 older citizens
are beneficiaries. In fact, it is, in most respects, a highly successful program (American
Association of Retired Persons [AARP], 2005). Because of women’s longer life
expectancies, they comprise 58% of all Social Security beneficiaries age 62 and older and
approximately 71% of beneficiaries aged 85 and older. Without Social Security, it is estimated
that more than 50% of our nation’s current population of older women would be poor
(Moody, 2002;Older Women’s League, 2003; Weir, Willis, & Sevak, 2002).
From its beginnings, Social Security was never intended to be the only source of retirement
income; rather, it was viewed as providing a foundation, along with incomes from pensions,
savings, and investments, in the creation of an eco- nomically secure old age for U.S. citizenry.
Yet for too many older Americans who lack private pensions or extensive
TABLE 2. Percentage of Older American Women Living in Poverty, by Marital Status in 2001
MARITAL STATUS POVERTY RATE (%)
Married 4.3
Widowed 15.9
Divorced 20.4
Never married 18.9
Source: U.S. Bureau of Census, Current Population Survey, March 2002.
17.0%
27.2%
0%
40.9%
25.2%
Less than 50% of Income
50% to 89% of Income

25. 90% to 99% of Income
100% of Income
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100% Men Women
30.5%
16.5% 11.7%
31.2%
FIGURE 1. Gender comparison of Social Security as a percentage of income for older
Americans, 2001.
U.S. Census Bureau, 2002, Current Population Survey, March Supplement as prepared by AARP
Public Policy Institute, 2003.
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assets, Social Security is their sole income source. As Figure 1 reveals, Social Security
represents 90% to 100% of retirement income for almost 59% of women and 29% of men.
Analysis by race further reveals that women of color currently rely even more heavily on Social
Security for their income in old age than do White women. Social Security provides more than
half the retirement income for over 80% of nonmarried older African American and Hispanic

26. women compared with 73% of older White women. Similarly, for more than 50% of African
American and Hispanic women, Social Security represents 90% or more of their retirement
income compared with 40% of White women (National Women’s Law Center, 2003).
The heavy reliance on Social Security by America’s poor- est elders is again underscored, as
shown in Table 3, through a comparison of the income sources for the lowest income quintile of
the 65-plus population, which is disproportion- ately occupied by women, with that of the
highest income quintile for this age group. Greater workforce attachment (e.g., full-time
employment), job stability (e.g., longer job tenures), and higher incomes are associated with a
greater accumulation of retirement resources. Women, as a result of their different employment
histories, are thus much less likely than men to receive a private pension in old age. Yet even
when an older woman does have pension income, it is typically much smaller than that of an
older man’s. Using CPS data from 1999 to 2001, Lee and Shaw (2003) found that only about
30% of older women received pension income compared with almost 47% of men. Women’s
median annual pension income was about half that of men: $5,600 versus $10,340 (in 2000
constant dollars).
For both genders, the most common reason for not par- ticipating in a pension plan is that the
employer simply does not offer one. Almost equal percentages of men and women—39% and
35%, respectively—reported the lack of an employer-sponsored plan as the primary reason for
nonparticipation. However, significant gender differences in pension participation exist among
employees working for companies that offer pension plans: Female (24%) employees were
almost twice as likely as male employees (13%) to report that their nonparticipation was due to
not working a sufficient number of hours to qualify for enroll- ment (Shaw & Hill, 2001). This
finding is of particular
concern given the dramatic expansion of part-time and temporary employment in the United
States during the past few decades. Nearly 25% of the U.S. workforce—more than 30 million
Americans—is now engaged in part-time employment with few employment-based benefits;
women of all races and minority men disproportionately fill these positions (Hudson, 2000).
Three features of the Social Security program are partic- ularly salient to women’s economic
status. First, the Social Security benefit formula is progressive. Benefits are deter- mined based
on workers’ earnings; thus, workers with higher earnings pay more taxes and receive higher
benefits than those with lower earnings. However, the progressive benefit formula means that
Social Security replaces a greater proportion of lower earners’ past income than of higher
earners’ past income (although higher income ben- eficiaries will receive a larger benefit in
dollars because they have paid more into the system). As noted in our previous discussion,
because women typically earn less than men, the progressive formula replaces a greater
proportion of their lifetime earnings. The progressive benefit formula is of particular importance
to women of color, who tend to be heavily concentrated in low-paying occupations. African
American and Hispanic women who are full-time workers earn, on average, only 65% and 56%,
respectively, of the earnings of White men and 74% of the earnings of White women(Older
Women’s League, 2003). For workers who retired at age 65 in 2000, the replacement rate for
what they had paid into Social Security was 53% of preretirement income for lower earners, 40%

27. for average earners, 32% for higher earners, and 24% for those with the maximum tax- able
earnings (Anzick & Weaver, 2001).
A second feature of the Social Security system that is salient for women is that workers’
dependents have access to benefits. Under Social Security law, a married woman or qualified
divorced woman (after a marriage of at least 10 years) is entitled to the higher of two benefits: a
benefit cal- culated based on her own employment history or a benefit that is 50% of her
husband’s (or former husband’s) benefit. A widow or divorced widow is also entitled to
the higher of her own worker benefit or her husband’s (or ex-husband’s) full benefit as
long as she meets requirements related to length of marriage and if her divorced husband has
lived long enough to collect benefits. The current reality is that women are more likely to receive
Social Security benefits as a dependent—a spouse or widow—than men because their lower
lifetime earnings mean that their benefits are typi- cally higher as a spouse or a widow versus as
an employee. Although almost all (95%) men receive a benefit based fully on their own
employment histories, only 37% of women garnered worker benefits in 1997 (Anzick & Weaver,
2001).
Third, Social Security is more than a worker retirement program; it offers both life insurance and
disability insur- ance for workers and their families. Moreover, these aspects of the Social
Security program are particularly crucial for
TABLE 3. Source of Income Among Persons Age 65 and Older in the Lowest and Highest
Income Quintiles, 2001
INCOME SOURCE (%) LOWEST QUINTILE HIGHEST QUINTILE
Social Security 83.0 20.0
Asset Income 2.0 19.0
Pensions 4.0 21.0
Earnings 1.0 38.0
Public Assistance 9.0 0.0
Other 1.0 2.0
Total 100.0 100.0
Source: Social Security Administration Income of Aged Chartbook, 2002.
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342

28. women. Despite increasing life expectancies, 1 of every 7 Americans (disproportionately men)
will still die before reaching age 67. Many of these individuals, who are the family primary wage
earners, lack life insurance policies. Through Social Security, family members are entitled to
survivor’s benefits; currently, of the approximately 47 mil- lion Americans who are Social
Security recipients, 7 million are the spouses and children of deceased workers. In fact, for the
average wage earner with a family, the Social Security insurance benefit is estimated to be
equivalent to a $322,000 life insurance policy (National Committee to Preserve Social Security
and Medicare, 2004). Long-term disability may also jeopardize an individual’s ability to be
employed. Although the vast majority of workers lack long-term dis- ability insurance, about 3
of every 10 young adult workers will become disabled before reaching age 67. Fortunately,
Social Security offers protection to families and workers with major disabilities that prevent
them from being able to work. For the average wage earner with a family, the Social Security
insurance benefit is calculated to be equivalent to a $233,000 disability insurance policy
(National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, 2004).
These nonretirement features of the program are criti- cally important to women across the life
span because only slightly more than 33% of female recipients of Social Security receive
benefits solely as retired workers compared with more than 80% of male recipients (National
Women’s Law Center [NWLC], 2002). Analyses by race underscore that the Social
Security’s disability and survivor benefits are critical particularly to the economic status of
women of color and their families. Approximately 20% of African American and Hispanic
beneficiaries are younger than 55 years compared with 10% of White beneficiaries. On the basis
of calculations with Social Security Administration data, the NWLC (2003) found that African
American women rely disproportionately on these nonretirement aspects of the Social Security
program, given their higher rates of disability and their likelihood of surviving their husbands.
The NWLC reports that
While African Americans make up 9% of all female
beneficiaries, African American women constitute
18% of female disabled worker beneficiaries.…
Whereas 7% of all Social Security beneficiaries are
children, 15% of African American beneficiaries are
children. In fact, African American children are almost
four times more likely to be lifted out of poverty by
Social Security than White children. (2003, p. 2)
Finally, the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) fea- ture of Social Security helps all
beneficiaries cope with rising costs such as utilities and prescription drugs. This third fea- ture is

29. especially valuable for women given their longer life expectancies. Without this inflation
protection feature, Social Security benefits would buy considerably less over
time. For example, with a 3% annual inflation rate and with- out the COLAs, it is estimated that
benefits would buy 25% less after 10 years (National Women’s Law Center, 2002).
Gender Inequities Inherent in Proposals to Privatize Social Security
Social Security is a successful program precisely because it remains the most important source of
retirement income for older Americans, especially low-income older women. Although concerns
have been raised about Social Security’s longer term financial solvency program, efforts to
reform it should not undermine the protections it currently offers our nation’s oldest citizens.
Immediate fiscal reforms to address a crisis appear to be unnecessary because the Social
Securities actuaries conservatively project that the trust fund balance will not be depleted until
2042. Yet, even after this date, Social Security would not be bankrupt; instead, annual collections
from payroll taxes would be sufficient to meet more than 70% of benefits (Board of Trustees,
Old Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance, 2004). The Congressional Budget
Office’s model estimates the possible trust fund depletion date as 2052 and only a 1% payroll
gap between income and benefits over the next 75 years, assuming no changes in the Social
Security pro- gram (Congressional Budget Office, 2004).
Although prior presidents and members of Congress have discussed the private mechanisms of
incentives to save, the likelihood of privatization has increased dramati- cally with the 2004
reelection of President Bush. Such a shift is congruent with the beginning privatization of
Medicare through the 2003 Medicare Prescription Reform in this current era of market and
private or individual responsibility (Binstock, 2002). Privatization would divert payroll taxes (or
general revenue income tax credits) to new personal investment accounts among workers
younger than 55 years. This model assumes a strong economy and stock market, discretionary
resources to invest, and indi- vidual knowledge and skills to make informed investment
decisions. The volatility of these assumptions, especially related to the stock market, will result
in both increased individual risk and greater federal budget deficits. Regardless of any particular
model, privatization reflects the following values: Free markets, not social insurance, are the
most efficient and fair way to distribute resources; employment success is rewarded; and
individual responsi- bility and freedom of choice (or risks) are paramount. These values contrast
dramatically with the values of uni- versalism, mutual responsibility, cross-generational bene-
fits, and earned right underlying the origin of Social Security (Smallhout, 2002).
Privatization of Social Security would negatively affect women, especially those of color, more
than men (Older Women’s League, 2002). Although the specifics of President Bush’s
current privatization model are not yet
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30. fully known, the costs of moving to a privatization scheme have been acknowledged in prior
analyses by the Social Security Administration and even by the Moynihan Commission’s
Report on Social Security. Under privatization, the progressive benefit formula of Social
Security, which replaces a higher percentage of earnings for lower income workers than higher
income workers, would be lost. Moreover, as low-income and part-time employees, many
women would have smaller private accounts to invest. With more limited financial resources,
women typically avoid higher risk investments; therefore, it is anticipated that the yield of their
accounts would generally be below average. In fact, women might find a larger share of their
private accounts going to administrative costs. Many policy experts now estimate that the
administrative costs—perhaps as high as $1 tril- lion—would be dramatically higher in
individual account systems (AARP, 2005). For example, if transac- tion fees involve a flat per-
account charge, administrative costs would consume a larger portion of the accounts of low- and
moderate-income older adults (Diamond, 1998; Munnell, 1999). Ultimately, the burden for the
manage- ment of the investment portfolio would fall squarely on the individual’s shoulders.
In addition, older women who have historically received little training in financial man- agement
may be at greater risk for faulty or poor invest- ment decisions.
Because of generally limited private investments, women are less likely than men to have
sufficient income to last until death. Privatization means that there would no longer be a lifetime
guarantee of a benefit; instead, when funds in the account are exhausted, the account ceases to
exist. Given women’s longer life expectancy compared with men, coupled with their smaller
accounts, women would face a greater prospect of outliving all of their savings and assets.
Although women can purchase lifetime private annuities, such annuities, unlike Social Security,
are monthly pay- ments based on gender-based life expectancies, resulting in women receiving a
lower lifetime benefit even when their investments are equal to those of men.
Concerns are also raised that privatization would likely eliminate death and disability protection
and the cost-of- living increase available through Social Security, all changes that would
disadvantage women’s benefits. Women, com- pared with men, are much more likely to be
responsible for children and themselves after a spouse’s disablement or death. How
privatization would impact divorced women is unclear. Under Social Security, divorced spouses
and divorced widows, after a marriage of 10 years, automatically receive the same benefits that
married spouses and widows receive without any corresponding reduction in benefits to the
worker or subsequent spouses. In a privatized system, however, the core benefit might be
reduced, and division of the private account between husband and wife would fall under the
jurisdiction of a divorce court.
The primary beneficiaries of privatization will be higher income unmarried workers who will not
be born until 2025 and who will be largely Caucasian males. In the short term, women will bear
the burden of transition and administrative costs, including the need to cut current Social
Security bene- fits when funds are diverted into individual accounts and being taxed twice (e.g.,
paying for their own retirement through private accounts while continuing to pay for current
beneficiaries; Cavanaugh, 2002; Favreault & Sammartino, 2002; National Committee to Preserve
Social Security and Medicare, 2005; Williamson, 2002). Debates about privatiza- tion also need
to consider other ways to prevent a shortfall in 2040, such as expanding the number of workers
participat- ing in Social Security by requiring state and local govern- ment workers to participate,

31. raising the cap on taxable income, reducing slightly future benefits or COLA increases, or
allowing the government to invest the funds in equity markets. Several analysts, for example,
have suggested that a 1.1% rise in the FICA tax would be sufficient to finance the Social
Security system throughout the baby boomer genera- tion’s retirement years (Diamond &
Orszag, 2003; National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, 2005; Quadagno,
1999). Although attention does need to be given to Social Security’s future, its solvency can
be achieved through incremental changes and does not require privatiza- tion, which undermines
its basic principles and reduces retirement income for women and persons of color.
Increasing Social Security’s Antipoverty Protection
The current debate on privatization has overshadowed dis- cussions of the plight of elders who
continue to live in poverty. Despite the enormous success of Social Security in lifting
generations of older Americans out of poverty, it remains a flawed antipoverty program
(Callahan, 1999). Several proposals for programmatic reforms to Social Security have been
advanced to reduce older women’s financial vulnerability, including raising the minimum
Social Security benefit; increasing the survivors benefit for widows; and providing dependent
care credits. A discussion of each of these options follows.
A Higher Minimum Social Security Benefit As we have shown, even a lifetime of employment
does not guarantee a financially secure retirement, especially for the working poor. Raising the
minimum Social Security bene- fit would be particularly valuable to women and persons of
color, given their overrepresentation in the secondary labor market, a sector that is characterized
by low-paying jobs with few benefits. Moreover, many women and persons of color are
employed in physically demanding or taxing jobs (e.g., domestic, industrial, and farm labor) that
lead to an earlier departure from the paid labor force. Lower income is also associated with a
greater risk for earlier onset of a
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number of chronic and disabling health conditions that might force earlier retirement decisions
(Kijakazi, 2003). Using the data from the National Health and Retirement Study, Flippen and
Tienda (2000) found that African Americans, Hispanics, and women experience more invol-
untary job separation in the years immediately before retirement and that these periods of
joblessness often result in permanent labor force withdrawal.
In fact, a special minimum Social Security benefit cur- rently exists for low-wage workers with a
history of steady employment that provides these retirees with a higher monthly benefit than they
would receive under the regular benefit formula. Few individuals, however, are currently eligible
for the special minimum benefit because of its restrictive eligibility requirements. In 2000, only
about 144,000 individuals, or 0.33% of Social Security beneficia- ries, received the special
minimum benefit. Moreover, the maximum benefit amount remains at only 85% of the fed- eral
poverty threshold for an adult aged 65 and older (Anazick & Weaver, 2001). A number of policy
analysts, such as Wendall Primus of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, have offered

32. proposals for a revised benefit for- mula and eligibility standards in order to both raise the
minimum benefit amount and more effectively target these funds to the working poor (See
Kijakazi, 2003, and Anazick & Weaver, 2001, for more detailed discussions of this pro- posed
reform.) Finally, increasing the minimum Social Security benefit would particularly benefit poor
employed women who either never married or were married fewer than 10 years and thus receive
a benefit based solely on their own employment histories.
Increase the Survivor Benefit for Widows Women often experience a significant decline in their
income with the death of their husband. Under the current Social Security system, a married
couple is allowed to receive 100% of the higher earner’s income as well as a spousal benefit
equal to 50% of the higher earner’s income (or her own earnings history if that would result
in benefits higher than the spouse’s benefit). On her husband’s death, a woman receives
100% of her own benefit or 100% of the deceased spouse’s benefit. For most widows, the
decline in Social Security income greatly exceeds the decline in their living expenses. The
federal poverty threshold for a 1-per- son older household equals 79% of the federal poverty
level for a 2-person older household. Thus, policy experts often suggest that the survivor’s
benefit should be increased to 75% of the couple’s benefit; in other words, the surviving
spouse’s benefit should not be reduced by more than 25% of the couple’s combined
benefit (Anzick & Weaver, 2001; Burkhauser & Smeeding, 1994).
Raising the survivor benefit would provide gains for older widowed women, but the largest
increases would be to wid- ows from families with higher lifetime earnings (Favreault,
Sammartino, 2002). As Harrington Meyer (1996) notes,
middle- and upper-class White women are more like to receive noncontributory Social Security
benefits. Because more women have entered the paid labor force and fewer women are married
for the qualifying 10-year marriage, what was originally an important safety net for lower
income retirees has greatest value for traditional families in higher income brackets (Harrington
Meyer, 1996).
Offering Dependent Care Credits Care credits are often debated as a way to reward and rec-
ognize women’s disproportionate responsibilities for rais- ing children. Rather than marital
status as an eligibility criterion, women would receive benefits based on their contribution to the
economy through both their labor force participation and their unpaid work of child care. Yet
care credit reforms need to take account of race and socioe- conomic class differences within the
female population. The most commonly debated type of care credit proposal is to remove zero-
earnings years—when women have been out of the paid work force because of child care
responsi- bilities—from women’s benefit calculation. This approach may further class and
racial inequities, however, because upper income White married women, who can afford not to
work for pay, are more likely to benefit than low-income married women of color who are
employed out of eco- nomic necessity. Because most low-income women have to work, they are
unlikely to have zero-earnings years in their benefit calculation. A second care credit model
would drop additional low-earnings years (9 years) from the benefit calculations. Currently,
workers can drop 5 low-earnings years between the ages of 22 and 62, which leaves them with
35 earnings years. Because the rewards for caregiving are directly tied to women’s earnings
histories, women with high earnings would again fare better than women with low earnings.

33. Placing a value on care is a third way to struc- ture care credits; such credits would be a set
amount of earnings, which would substitute for a certain number of years of earnings that are
below this level. To illustrate, if the care credit was $15,000 and a woman within her high- est 35
years of earnings had 2 years in which she earned only $8,000, she would be credited with an
additional $7,000 for those years. This approach would benefit lower income women more than
those with higher earnings (Herd, 2002). Care credits would be a more progressive way to
distribute benefits than spousal benefits, because women would move onto the worker benefit
and their lower incomes would be buffered by economic value being assigned to their unpaid
care work. Generally, low-income women would be hurt most by a system that dropped more
zero- or low-earnings years and would benefit most if half of their median wage were substituted
into low-earnings years. Because care credits would eliminate spousal bene- fits, this approach
would probably be revenue neutral for the government, unlike privatization proposals that carry
heavy transition and administrative costs.
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All three of the identified programmatic reforms would redistribute women’s benefits from
earlier to later in life. However, it is evident that each of these programmatic changes would
differentially impact various subpopula- tions of older women, given the complexity and
diversity of their life experiences. In one of the most significant studies to date, Favreault and
Sammartino (2002) use a dynamic microsimulation model on the 1990–1993 Survey of
Income and Program Participation data to explore the impact of expanding the minimum benefit,
increasing the survivor benefit, and offering dependent care credits. Their analysis underscores
that programmatic reforms to improve Social Security’s adequacy and equity for current and
future generations of women can be designed to be low-cost or revenue neutral. They conclude
that
Policymakers should be careful not to rely on intu-
ition when designing reforms to shore up women’s
Social Security benefits, but rather to rely on rigorous
analyses … we have demonstrated that policymakers
can change the parameters in the existing system to
target the highest-risk low-income and older women.
Our analyses show how legislators can combine a
series of changes into packages that meet multiple

34. needs. (2002, p. ix)
Since its origin, the Social Security program has been amended a number of times to increase its
antipoverty effectiveness. Amendments have included, for example, raises in benefit levels, the
indexing of levels to inflation (COLAs), and shortening of the marriage duration require- ment
from 20 to 10 years. Each of the identified reforms— raising the minimum benefit level,
increasing the survivor benefit level, and offering dependent care credits—repre- sent critical
programmatic reforms that would further strengthen Social Security’s antipoverty protection.
Unfortunately, the current focus on Social Security’s long-term solvency overlooks its
centrality to older women’s relative economic security and protection from poverty,
especially among low-income women of color. Even though a significant percentage of older
women who receive Social Security benefits still remain poor or near poor, their economic status
is likely to be at even greater risk under a system of privatization that assumes individu- als have
adequate resources and investment capability. Given the relative invisibility of older women in
our public policy-making process, their needs for protection from poverty under revenue-neutral
proposals are unlikely to be heard compared with the financial gains from privatization for
investment companies. Although the Older Women’s League has been a strong advocate for
changes in Social Security to benefit older women, their voices are likely to be silenced by the
powerful interest groups that characterize policymaking in this current era of free market and
indi- vidual responsibility (Binstock, 2002).
The characteristics of future cohorts of women Social Security beneficiaries will differ markedly
from current women beneficiaries. Changing marital, family, and labor force patterns suggest
that a smaller proportion of women will be entitled to benefits solely as spouses or survivors and
a growing proportion will receive worker-only benefits, dually entitled spouse benefits, and
dually entitled survivor benefits. It is critical to recognize, however, that these trends will not
eliminate concerns about the adequacy and equity of Social Security benefits. As the debate
regarding how to “save― Social Security intensifies, progressives must effec- tively make
the case that privatizing Social Security would mean less retirement income for the majority of
Americans and would be particularly harmful to women. The Social Security program can be
protected for future generations of retirees without introducing the risk of and high cost of
individual private accounts. Further, progressives must advocate strongly that this current period
of reform offers an opportunity not only to protect but also to raise the safety net of Social
Security for older women who are at high risk for poverty.
The profession of social work has a long history of grass- roots advocacy and speaking out about
the role of govern- ment in protecting our nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Social workers,
individually and collectively through the National Association of Social Workers, can play a
significant role in communicating concerns about the president’s pri- vatization plans,
particularly for women. As a historically female profession, social work represents an important
voice in working to preserve and strengthen Social Security not only for the current cohort of
older women but also for our daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters.
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background briefing. Retrieved May 20, 2005, www.aarp.org/socialsecurity
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Working Paper Series Number 87. Washington DC: Social Security Administration, Office of
Research, Evaluation and Statistics.
Binstock, R. (2002). The politics of enacting reform. In S. H. Altman & D. I. Schatman (Eds.),
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Burkhauser, R. V., & Smeeding, T. M. (1994). Social Security reform: A budget neutral
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