The proportion of seniors living in poverty has declined from 35 percent in 1959 to 11 percent in 1998. That is because of better Social Security and pensions, improved health care and higher levels of education, said Richard Suzman, associate director for behavioral and social research at the National Institute on Aging, one of the nine agencies that contributed to the report by the Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics. But despite decades of progress, inequalities between racial and ethnic groups are starkly highlighted in the report, which gathers information from more than a dozen national data sources for the first time. Many minorities have missed out on the trend toward better education, a key to improving economic status. The report shows that in 1998, about 72 percent of non-Hispanic whites aged 65 and older had finished high school, compared with 44 percent of older blacks and 29 percent of elderly Hispanics.
Many older blacks have fewer assets and more debts than older whites.
Many older blacks do not own their own homes, have little savings and have not bought stocks, social policy experts said. While the situation improved between 1984 and 1994, it deteriorated sharply between 1994 and 1999, the report shows. Frank P. Stafford, research scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, said improved Social Security and pensions in recent years may have given black households the confidence to spend more, reducing their assets. Stafford, who compiled the figures on net worth for the report, said African American households were more likely to refinance their homes to help out friends and relatives. White households, on the other hand, were more likely to have profits from stock trading, which they could spend without denting their net wealth.