If providing healthcare to more Americans is the goal, the COVID-era tax credits for people buying insurance on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces have been a big success. Enrollment in ACA policies has doubled to a record 24 million since 2021, when Congress approved the credits, which reduced monthly premiums by hundreds of dollars and ensured that health insurance was affordable during the pandemic. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 extended the subsidies through the end of this year. But the tax credits would not be renewed under some budget proposals being considered in the House. Without them, the Urban Institute has estimated enrollment in ACA policies would decline by more than 7 million and that 4 million of…

Among the many explanations for the baby boom are rising incomes in the post-war economy, modern appliances that made childrearing more manageable, and lots of women who were no longer working in the factories. But a new study makes a compelling case for another cause: FHA and VA mortgages that made borrowing money for a house much more affordable for young couples. These mortgages changed homeownership from a privilege to a viable option for working-class and middle-class couples who wanted to raise a family. Federally insured FHA and VHA loans reduced the upfront cost of buying a house. The mortgage programs drove the births of an additional 3 million babies between 1935 and 1957, researchers from the Federal Reserve Board…

With its fate hanging in the balance, it’s a good time to remember the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau arose out of subprime mortgage scams like these. A mother who moved her young children out of coveted government-subsidized housing after a loan broker told her she could afford a house. Foreclosure ensued immediately. A woman wanted to buy a house but she had poor credit. The broker addressed that by adding her unemployed daughter to the application and falsely claiming the pair owned a hair salon. The broker filled out a business license at city hall on their behalf. A young couple from Colombia were thrilled to be able to buy a home. They were unaware the broker had inflated t…

COVID and technological advances have created a perfect storm of fraud against older Americans. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of fraud cases reported to the Federal Trade Commission more than doubled to 2.6 million. But the losses from these scams tripled to $10 billion, indicating the scammers are becoming more effective. “Today’s scams are more coordinated, more sophisticated and more personalized,” Ray Bellucci, executive vice president of TIAA said in a new report on fraud focused on the impact on Americans over 60. Older people have long been more susceptible to fraud due to high rates of social isolation, heightened during COVID. This is especially true if they are divorced, single, or widowed and don’t have someone to talk…

In a recent podcast, syndicated columnist Helen Dennis and I discuss her program for “renewment” as opposed to retirement. Specifically aimed at career women in or moving towards retirement, Dennis and her program co-founder Bernice Bratter have convened more than 40 groups of women working together to find fulfillment in their post-working lives. These groups of eight to ten women meet regularly, sometimes for decades, to discuss the issues they face in their later years. While each group is autonomous, they are guided by Dennis and Bratter’s book, “Project Renewment: The First Retirement Model for Career Women.” It provides prompts for discussion such as: The New Retirement Dennis explained to me that a lot about retirement has changed in recent decades. This is t…

To qualify for federal disability benefits, individuals must demonstrate that a medical condition prevents them from working. But some disability beneficiaries do work and those who earn more than Social Security allows are not entitled to a monthly benefit. These working beneficiaries may run the risk, often unwittingly, of being overpaid.   The overpayments must be paid back, which can cause hardship for a group of individuals who are already struggling financially. According to researchers at Mathematica, the risk is high that working beneficiaries receive payments they aren’t entitled to. While only 4 percent of the people in this study have earnings above the monthly limit, the Social Security Administration overpaid 82 percent of them during the decade the researchers…

When COVID swept in, the U.S. Social Security Administration responded quickly and closed its field offices on March 27, 2020. They remained closed for two full years, largely eliminating the option to apply in-person for federal disability benefits. So what did people who needed to apply do instead, and how did the closings affect the flow of applications? Were some people with disabilities deterred from applying at all? New research answers these questions by analyzing Social Security’s data for online, telephone and in-person applications to assess the impact of this unprecedented disruption in the agency’s in-person services. The researchers estimate that the suspension of in-person applications caused a 6 percent decline in all disability applications submitted to the agency over…

It’s common for older workers to develop an acute medical problem requiring immediate attention or to have a spouse or parent who suddenly becomes ill and must be cared for. Paid sick leave provides the flexibility for short periods to cope with the medical and caregiving demands that crop up more frequently as people age. A new study confirms these policies are very effective in helping older workers in particular maintain their level of employment while they get through a crisis. Providing paid sick leave is a fairly common practice in this country. A majority of workers already have access through their employee benefits. Over the past decade, a growing number of state and local governments have also mandated paid…

Some 38 million family caregivers spend an estimated 36 billion hours a year caring for their loved ones. The patchwork of federal and state assistance available to them doesn’t match up to the weight of this burden. One policy in particular stands out as something they feel would help them: direct payments for their time spent as a caregiver. While this benefit exists under numerous state Medicaid programs, these programs help limited numbers of people because the eligibility requirements are very difficult to meet. Yet direct payments were by far the most popular policy option: 44 percent of the caregivers who participated in recent focus groups said this was their top choice among various options for financial assistance. Direct payments…