In November, the Census Bureau announced that it had created an additional way to measure poverty in America. The “supplemental poverty measure” attempts to address shortcomings in the way poverty has been calculated since 1965. Its goals include reflecting the effects of government policies, adjusting for increased standards of living over the years, and taking into account medical costs across different population segments.
The supplemental measure identified a poverty rate of only 0.8 percent more than the official measure. But the story is different for the country’s 65-and-over population. The official measure sets the poverty rate for senior citizens at 9 percent. But according to the supplemental measure, 15.9 percent of Americans over the age of 65 are poor.
Poor? Not Me,
Say Low-Income Elderly
Low-income seniors in Red Hook and Sheepshead Bay don’t think they’re poor. In fact, they consider themselves rich.
“All Your Life You’ve Lived in the Middle Class…”
Sol and Marilyn Weltman live in Brighton Beach and earn a yearly sum of just over $30,000 from Social Security. Like many senior citizens, they technically live above the poverty line, but they struggle to make ends meet. They shared their story–and their expense log–with The Ink.
Americans are spending a greater proportion of their income on health and medical care as they age. This data visualization presents some facts and figures that elderly Americans across the nation and in Brooklyn are facing.
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