Squared Away Blog

In the absence of a national paid family leave policy, 13 states have filled the breach with their own programs to partially compensate workers who take time off to care for an ill family member. In a new study examining the laws in three of these states – California, New Jersey, and New York – women are big beneficiaries of being able to take time off with financial support while they care for a spouse who has fallen ill.   Nationwide, about 8 percent of working wives whose husbands develop a medical problem quit their jobs in response to the stress and strain of intensive caregiving duties. But in the researchers’ comparison of California, New Jersey and New York wit…

Social Security reduces poverty, stabilizes household finances, and can even support a beneficiary’s extended family. But drill down to a single month in the life of a low-income retiree or someone on Social Security disability, and a picture of hardship comes through. Researcher Madelaine L’Esperance at the University of Alabama found that financial problems build as the days pass since the last Social Security check. Over the course of a month, she said, recipients “were more likely to experience a financial shortfall as the pay cycle progressed.” The shortfalls occurred on the days when their spending, as reported in a daily diary, sharply reduced or depleted their cash on hand. Making ends meet can be very challenging for low-income peo…

It’s happening all over the developed world. Birth rates are falling in China, South Korea, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Greece. Things have played out more slowly in the United States, but we seem to continue moving in the same direction. The U.S. fertility rate has been in decline since just before the Great Recession and plummeted in 2020 as COVID wreaked havoc on the economy and created uncertainty for aspiring parents. But in 2021, the birth rate turned positive for the first time since 2014. New research by the Center for Retirement Research looks past these conflicting signals and finds that, according to early survey data, many younger women lowered their expectations during COVID about how many children…

Social networks dwindle naturally over the years as spouses die and friends lose touch. Nearly half of 75-year-olds are widowed or single. Disabilities like diminished hearing or a bum knee also interfere with an older person’s ability to socialize. But maintaining a robust network is crucial, because a substantial body of research shows that retirees with a vigorous social life are healthier and happier. Now there’s hope even for people who live alone or have lost their connections to friends during COVID’s enforced isolation. According to research, weak social ties – the person you chat with at the grocery store, a fellow dog walker, or the waiter at a neighborhood restaurant – may actually be more important to maintaining a…

Mary O’Connor has been retired for about 14 years and works hard to cultivate her social life. The 74-year-old has made many friends during organized activities, including a trip to Norway, excursions to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, walking tours around Boston, and a course in the classics to prepare for traveling to Rome and Florence. “It’s important to make new connections and friends as you get older,” the retired Boston public school teacher, who is single, said during a recent webinar on “productive aging” organized by the University of Massachusetts, Boston.  Even if O’Connor goes to one of the organized events by herself, she said she doesn’t feel like she’s alone. “Because you’re sitting together,” she said, “you…

The Affordable Care Act has helped significant numbers of people with disabilities pay for the medical care their serious conditions require by adding Medicaid as a second layer of insurance to their standard Medicare coverage. Dual eligibility for Medicare and Medicaid increased from 38 percent of people receiving disability benefits to between 42 percent and 44 percent in the 14 states that accepted the federal option to expand their Medicaid programs immediately after legislation started subsidizing these expansions in 2014, according to RAND researchers. Medicare isn’t just for retirees, and the researchers were curious about how broader Medicaid coverage has affected people under 65 who receive Social Security’s disability insurance. They automatically go on Medicare two years after becoming eligib…

The earnings gap between women and men remains stubbornly large. So even a little progress counts as good news. One group of women made some gains during the pandemic. Let’s use the term middle class as shorthand for someone earning between 40 percent and 60 percent of all workers’ wages. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said in its wage report that these women made “a small but promising move in the right direction.” In 2019, middle class women earned 83.8 cents for every dollar that middle-class men earned. In 2022, the women’s pay rose to 84.6 cents. Here’s the bad news. The pay gap for all female workers widened. They earned 79.7 cents for every dollar a man was paid…

Numerous articles have appeared here in recent months about the ways that racial disparities are infused into our financial and economic systems. Two barriers to Latinx and Black workers’ ability to save, for example, are less health insurance coverage and more burdensome student loan payments than White workers have. Or consider the different long-term housing options available to Black and White seniors. And while COVID’s financial toll hit people with disabilities especially hard, it was even tougher for people of color with disabilities. The theme of the research studies featured in these and other articles is no accident. The studies are funded by the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA), which encourages researchers around the country to explore the socioeconomic aspects…

I am neither Black nor Hispanic but can relate in one small way to the difficulty so many people of color have coming up with a down payment for a house. Years ago, as a single person, I didn’t have the cash for a down payment either. But I was able to borrow $10,000 from my 401(k) to buy a small condominium in Somerville, Mass., next door to Boston. And I was fortunate to have a generous friend who made an unsolicited $10,000 donation to the cause. Sometimes, parents come to the rescue and help their adult children get over the down payment hurdle. Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies quantifies the financial dilemma for Black and Hispanic workers,…

Resilience – financial, emotional, and in the form of family and community support – was sorely tested when COVID-19 turned lives upside down. In a study of workers and retirees 50 and older, the people who lived alone or with extended family struggled the most in the first year of COVID to make the financial adjustments required to get through the economic slump. And due to their age, they had the added challenge of dealing with chronic health conditions or physical impairments when medical and personal services were out of reach. Researchers at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies used a variety of ways to gauge their resilience and identify where that resilience broke down in 2020. The study describes…

Technology has had a profound impact on how we work. Changes in what employers expect from an aging workforce reflect that evolution – and the changes have largely been positive.  Americans in their late 50s and early 60s increasingly are holding jobs that require them to be highly trained or college educated to take on the cognitive tasks the positions require. Occupations such as sales, production, laborer, and repair have given way to technical and professional employment, according to the Urban Institute’s in-depth analysis of U.S. occupational data. But while the mix of jobs in the economy has clearly changed, the more significant change underway has occurred within specific occupations, the researchers said. Older workers find that all kinds of…

Choosing a Medicare option is one of the biggest decisions baby boomers make. Nearly half of U.S. retirees today have Medicare Advantage policies – that’s double the market share just 15 years ago. The reason for Advantage plans’ popularity is their low monthly premiums. But as enrollment surges, some of our blog readers who signed up for the plans have complaints. Advantage plans are complete insurance policies that operate much like employer health plans with copayments and deductibles. They have been heavily criticized for becoming increasingly profitable and costly for the federal Medicare program, which reimburses insurers for retirees’ care. And retirees complain that they can’t go to any doctor or hospital they like. They are talking about Advantage plans…