Compared with men, elderly women are three times more likely to be widowed or living alone, spend more years and a larger percentage of their lifetime disabled, are nearly twice as likely to reside in a nursing home, and are more than twice as likely to live in poverty. Almost three-quarters of all elderly persons with incomes below the poverty level are women. But what is perhaps even more significant is that more than half of elderly widows now living in poverty were not poor before the death of their husbands. Poverty increases with age and is especially prevalent among older women of color and older women who live alone. Most older women today will live out their lives as widows dependent on Social Security benefits as their primary source of income.
Older women are only about half as likely as older men to be receiving pension income.
The older they live, the higher is their risk. Three out of four persons over age 65 on Supplemental Security Income are women. The statistics for older women of many minority groups are even more bleak. Among older women living alone, three out of five African-Americans and two out of five Latinas live in poverty. While present cohorts of older women face serious economic challenges, future generations of older women will probably fare better for a number of reasons.