If you rebuild it, they will succumb. That's the gist of a new report on the devastating effects that changes in the Social Security system may reap upon society's most vulnerable elders, older women who live alone. Older women are as liable to be poor in 2020 as today's older women unless Social Security reformers focus more attention on protecting women's interests, warns a new study released by The Gerontological Society of America. The study illustrates how indispensable the national retirement system is for millions of older women. And as a result women have the most to gain or lose from impending reform.
Older women living alone are at greatest risk.
Currently, an estimated three of every four poor older Americans are women, and the early forecasts are that poverty and insecurity will be as much of a problem for older women in the 21st century as today, the report says. For many divorced and never married women, as well as women over 85 who live alone, the risk of poverty looms large. The study acknowledges Social Security reform must include benefit cuts and tax increases, but at the same time, calls for a harder look at reform proposals' impacts on women. The study urges policymakers and reformers to be cautious about trading the system's basic insurance protections and benefits for a risky, insecure privatized system, saying the rewards of privatization are questionable and probably not a good deal for most women. The challenge and opportunity facing policymakers is to explore ways to strengthen, not weaken the national retirement system, according to University of California, San Francisco sociology professor Carroll Estes, a co-investigator for this study.