Squared Away Blog

 When COVID-19 started spreading through nursing homes last spring, the United States had no first-hand experience battling a coronavirus. That’s a fair point but an inadequate explanation for a tragedy in which more than 100,000 nursing home residents and staff to date have died of COVID-related causes. There is plenty of blame to go around. Governments either wouldn’t or couldn’t provide enough personal protective equipment, forcing the certified nursing assistants to don garbage bags and recycle masks. A shortage of tests limited the ability to detect asymptomatic cases and contain outbreaks. The Centers for Disease Control, prior to the pandemic, had documented poor infection control practices. This made nursing homes a petri dish for spreading the virus. Acute staffing shortages…

Four out of five retired households will pay little or no income taxes. But the tax rates at the highest income levels are meaningful, averaging 11 percent of household income and as much as 23 percent at the very top. These estimates come from a new analysis by the Center for Retirement Research that sheds light on a potentially important consideration that is often overlooked by people approaching retirement age. The highest tax rates are paid by the highest-income households because they often withdraw money from 401(k)s and IRAs to supplement their Social Security benefits. They must also pay capital gains taxes when they sell stocks and bonds for a profit from their regular financial accounts. Households with income in…

Many unemployed and underemployed workers have run out of options for paying the rent. The National Low Income Housing Coalition, the Aspen Institute, and other organizations estimate that up to 40 million renters risk being evicted this winter. Congress is currently negotiating a new COVID-19 relief package but it’s not yet known whether it will extend a CDC moratorium on evictions or go beyond the Cares Act last spring and provide rental assistance to help renters and, by extension, their landlords. Squared Away spoke with Sarah Saadian, vice president of public policy for the National Low Income Housing Coalition, about what she describes as an impending calamity. Q: How bad is the current situation? Saadian: It’s really hard to get…

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires that insurance companies offer coverage to young adults with disabilities – like all young people – through their parents’ employer coverage until age 26. So, up to this point, many adults with disabilities now have a viable way to get health services, independent of any government assistance. But at 26, that changes. A Mathematica study finds that’s when some start applying to the federal Supplemental Security Income Program (SSI) – probably partly to gain access to Medicaid health coverage. Health insurance is critically important to people with disabilities, who often need expensive, specialized medical services. SSI’s purpose is to provide monthly cash assistance for living expenses if they lack financial resources and don’t hav…

 More than half of young adults are now living with their parents – the highest level in more than a century, according to the Pew Research Center. This alarming statistic, first featured in a September blog, is the result of a long-term trend that has accelerated during the economic slowdown caused by COVID-19. In this PBS NewsHour video by Catherine Rampell, young adults 24 to 39 years old who are taking refuge in their parents’ homes talked about their stalled social lives and disrupted careers – their disappointments always tinged with a sense of humor. They include Marcellus Adams, who was laid off from two jobs, as an auto mechanic and emergency room staffer, and, at 29, has never really lived on…

Robert and Brenda Lugar In the 3 1/2 years since Brenda Lugar was diagnosed with dementia due to Lewy body disease, she has found great comfort in the people who want to make her life a little easier. This support takes many forms. At church on Sunday mornings, Shirley always reminds Lugar of her name. When Lugar is writing an email, she knows it’s okay to text her friend, Michele, or her sister-in-law, Janet, for help finding the right word. Lugar’s husband of 43 years, Robert Lugar, recently bought her a special board for Christmas so she has a place to work on her jigsaw puzzles – and he insisted she open it early and start enjoying it now. “Just…

Last spring, as COVID-19 tore through the nation’s nursing homes, many people agonized over whether to pull their elderly parents out and assume responsibility for the care. The fall surge in the virus is no doubt causing more handwringing as adult children again weigh the challenges of home care against concerns about their parents’ physical and mental well-being. One practical consideration is the impact on the work lives of parental caregivers, who are overwhelmingly women. Recent research has found that “there are long-term costs associated with caregiving reflected in [lower] earnings even long after caregiving has taken place.” The research involved women in their 50s and 60s with at least one living parent or in-law, though they generally provided car…

In this difficult time, there many things to be thankful for: our family’s good health, our medical workers and scientists, our cleaning crews, grocery store workers and delivery drivers. We must also remember the people who have lost loved ones. To stay safe, millions of Americans have scaled back tomorrow’s meal to a modest event. But we hope that all of our blog readers can find comfort in the things that we can be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving. Read our blog posts in our ongoing coverage of COVID-19. ……

How often do you eat red meat? Do you exercise regularly? Cancer in your family? Did you go to college? These questions – among the varied and complex predictors of longevity – are packed into a calculator that will estimate how long you could live. The calculator was created by Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on longevity and the genetics of aging at Boston University. Articles about the links between longevity and diet and lifestyle are perennial fodder for the popular press and health magazines. But Dr. Perls’ research dives deeper – into genetics. In his work with geneticists, statisticians and computer scientists, he has studied the connections between genetics and people with exceptional longevity – nonagenerians (people living into…

Construction and factory workers, truck drivers, and cleaning crews don’t always have the flexibility to work a few extra years to beef up their monthly Social Security checks. Several blog readers stressed this point in their comments on a recent blog article, “Changing Social Security: Who’s Affected.” Lorraine Porto retired from a desk job, but her family is filled with craftsmen, carpenters, electricians, farmers, and truckers who worked “until they were worn out.” People in white-collar jobs don’t always appreciate “just how tough and demanding it is” to climb poles every day, descend into manholes, build skyscrapers, or bring in the hay in 90-degree heat and sub-zero temperatures, Porto said. Her comment was in response to the article, which described…

When David Marotta is investing his clients’ money in mutual funds, he scrutinizes the fees. To demonstrate why fees are so important, Marotta charted the fees and 10-year returns for dozens of index funds in the Standard & Poor’s 500 family. Since these funds all track the same index and their performance is roughly the same, the fees will largely determine how much of the return the investor keeps and how much goes to the mutual fund company. “The larger the fee the less that it performs. It’s kind of a straight line,” said the Charlottesville, Virginia investment manager. “Anytime we’re picking a fund” for a client, “we’re trying to find the lowest-cost fund that we can find in that…

Everyone knows about the dangers of opioid addiction. But prescription opioids can be useful to people with physical disabilities if they ease their pain so they can hold down a job. A new study finds that this might be occurring in certain parts of the country where more opioid prescriptions are written. But this finding is at odds with other evidence in the study that these same areas also see increased enrollment in Social Security’s disability program. A possible increase in employment is puzzling, since this program has strict limits on how much people can earn. Adibah Abdulhadi at the University of Wisconsin reconciled her seemingly contradictory findings this way: some people with disabilities, including some who rely on opioids,…