About 90 percent of married couples age 65 to 69 own their homes, compared with 67 percent of aged women who live alone. The aging of America has dramatic effects on social structure in the U.S., influencing marital status, caregiving, and living arrangements. These changes are likely to have an enormous impact on the current, informal system of long-term care, affecting who needs care, who can provide it, and who can afford it. The gender gap in life expectancy and differences in remarriage rates among middle-aged and older adults account for much of the differences. In addition, divorced men age 45 to 64 remarry at a rate of 67 per 1,000 compared with 30 per 1,000 for women of the same age.
Elderly women are much more likely to live alone than elderly men.
About 9.4 million older people lived by themselves in 1994, of whom 79 percent were women. Research indicates that older people living alone have greater levels of depression, loneliness, and social isolation. Newer findings, however, show that many older people are developing social networks of friends and are participating in activities that appear to lessen the impact of losing a spouse. In 1990, about 1.6 million people age 65 and older lived in nursing homes. About 35 percent of people reaching age 65 will have at least one nursing home admission during their lifetime.