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Boomers Need Alternative Forms of Housing (as Does Everyone Else)
We have a housing crisis in the United States that has as much to do with the types of housing available as the quantity. Builders construct luxury McMansions because they are more profitable than middle-income housing. Seniors can’t move out of their single-family homes because there are few alternatives nearby. Both factors limit the supply and thus increase the cost of housing for young families. I recently had a discussion with Catherine Buell, the former director of Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund, about alternative types of housing that can enhance the lives of baby boomers and younger people as well. She started by discussing the contrasting housing markets faced by prospective home buyers of different ages. “Many boomers own their houses outright, and quite frankly,…
August 14, 2025
What Can We Learn About Long-Term Care Models from Home and Abroad?
My fascinating conversation with Ben Veghte, executive director of the Washington Cares Fund, covered both his state’s innovative model for public financing of long-term care and the Dutch approach to senior care. The Washington Cares Fund The Washington Cares Fund is a unique long-term care financing model that – starting in July 2026 – will provide state residents with up to $36,500 for long-term care costs, financed by a 0.58-percent payroll tax. To qualify, residents must have contributed for 10 years, with some exceptions. I asked Veghte what to me was the obvious question – or perhaps flaw – in the plan: $36,500 is not very much given the high cost of care. He responded that the Washington plan is a stepping stone in two ways,…
July 17, 2025
Intergenerational Living Could Address the Affordable Housing and Care Gaps
There’s growing discussion of “social” housing as part of the solution to the ongoing housing crisis. While it can have various meanings, social housing is essentially public or subsidized housing that often comes with services. It is the mainstay of housing in Vienna, which is often rated the most livable city in the world. Unlike much of the subsidized housing in the United States, social housing is high quality and often includes residents with varying incomes. In a recent podcast, I had the opportunity to discuss a unique form of social housing with Derenda Schubert, the director of Bridge Meadows in Oregon. The three Bridge Meadows communities provide housing to both seniors and foster families. The existing communities have 36 to 40 housing units. The seniors live in…
June 12, 2025
Will You Need or Provide Long-Term Care?
The Trump Administration’s flouting of the U.S. Constitution brings to mind Benjamin Franklin’s often quoted statement that “[o]ur new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Taxes also may not be as certain as Franklin had thought, with the recently passed budget resolution allowing for $5.3 trillion in tax cuts over the coming decade. But that aside, almost as certain as death and taxes is the likelihood that sometime during our lives we will be either caregivers or care recipients – or both. The problem is that it’s difficult to predict when and for how long we will be receiving or…
May 15, 2025
401(k) Tax Subsidy and Matches Favor Higher Earners, Often White
The Social Security program was designed to support lower-income retirees more by replacing a larger share of their past earnings than higher earners receive. But the subsidies that encourage workers to save for retirement tilt in the opposite direction. For this reason, White workers – who tend to earn more than Blacks and Hispanics – receive a disproportionate share of the employer matches and federal tax breaks embedded in 401(k)-style savings plans, according to a study of workers with these plans. White workers start out saving more. They contribute 4.2 percent of their earnings, on average, and their employer matches add another 2.1 percent for a total saving rate of roughly 6 percent, the researchers at MIT, Harvard, Yale, and t…
May 8, 2025
A State Policymaker Discusses Lessons Learned from COVID
In a recent podcast, I had the opportunity to speak with Marylou Sudders, the Secretary of Health and Human Services for Massachusetts throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. But COVID was only part of what she faced during her eight-year term. Sudders pointed out that Massachusetts has an older population than most states and by 2050 almost a third of people will be 65+. As a result, she and Governor Charlie Baker created a Council to Address Aging in Massachusetts to get the entire cabinet to think about how to become an age-friendly state. The Commission’s approach was to urge every community to plan locally on how to help their residents age in place. Lack of Continuum of Housing Options One of the state’s…
May 1, 2025
Tax Credit Reduces Disabilities Among Older Workers
To improve low-income households’ economic well-being, the social safety net provides both cash assistance and additional resources to support a better lifestyle – safer housing, more education or training, or healthy but expensive fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats. The health and employment benefits of three programs passed in the 1960s and 1970s – food stamps, Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) – are the focus of a University of Wisconsin study showing they reduce the prevalence of work-limiting disabilities and enable older Americans to remain in the labor force. The EITC was very effective in reducing disability. This federal tax credit for low-income and some moderate-income workers can reduce their tax bills by hundreds or thousands of dollars a year…
April 24, 2025
The Shrinking of Japan: A Harbinger of What Will Happen to the U.S.?
The graphic below (Figure 1) of the oldest societies in the world – from Visual Capitalist – is both striking and somewhat misleading. Monaco is far older than any other country, no doubt because you have to be old and rich to afford to live there. Many of the other places on the list are tropical island retirement paradises, including the U.S. Virgin Islands. Comparing Japan and the United States It’s worth taking a look at Japan’s demographics since they could paint a picture of what we and other developed nations will face in coming years. Their population today has an estimated median age of 49.8 years compared to 38.5 years in the United States. Japan has a fertility rate of just 1.2…
April 17, 2025
Workers Drop Health Insurance, Stabilizing Employer Costs
The cost to employers of providing their workers with health insurance has remained fairly stable for years. At first blush, this seems like good news for workers. When benefit costs rise, employers tend to take it out of their employees’ wages. But as costs stabilized, health insurance no longer exerted the downward pressure on paychecks that it did back in the 1990s. This had the added advantage of halting the erosion of wages on which Social Security levies its payroll tax. But to fully understand what all of this meant for workers requires digging into why employers’ insurance costs, measured as a percentage of workers’ total compensation, stabilized. A recent study delved into this question by examining the period 1996…