Older Women: The Economics of Aging

by Anne J. Stone and Jennifer Griffith (1998)
Price: $6.95

Older Women: The Economics of Aging is a comprehensive, 86-page report on the economic status of older women in the United States-from household and personal income and the older single woman's annual expenditures to economic security and labor force participation. Older Women provides the reader with the tools to understand the status of older women and how older women compare with older men and with women in other age groups. The new Older Women includes a number of tables and figures allow-allowing readers to form their own conclusions about whether-or by how much-the econom-ic situation of older women today differs from the situa-tion of older women when the last edition was published 14 years ago, or-in some cases-even a full generation ago. This edition also includes a discussion of the policy implications of the statistics and trends presented in the report, with particular reference to the future of Social Security and the private pension system.

• Did you know that well over half the 10-plus million older women who maintain house-holds have incomes under half the U.S. house-hold median? (See page 26 in the report.)
  
• Or that women householders have the lowest medi-an net worth of all older people, even when home equity is counted? (See page 42.)
  
• Did you know that nearly eight million women over age 65 live alone? (See page 15.)
  
• Would you have guessed that the average older woman who lives alone spends more than her in-come just to maintain a very modest life-style? (See page 44.)
  
• Are you surprised to hear that women make up an even larger share of the elderly poor than they did in the early 1980s? (See page 35.)
  
• Did you know that close to 30 percent of older black women have a disabil-ity requiring an-other person's help with a daily liv-ing activity? (See page 21.)
  
• Did you know that family members provide a home for one in five of the women over 85 who are not in nursing homes? (See page 16.)

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