Squared Away Blog

Anyone who was paying attention to COVID’s devastation, whether in terms of being exposed to the virus at work or deaths, could not miss the racial aspect of it. A new study of Americans over 50 confirms that Black and Hispanic workers, whose jobs often placed them on the front lines in the service industry, were much more likely to miss at least two weeks of work due to illness than their White counterparts. And this vulnerability had serious financial consequences, which were often compounded by a lack of employer benefits like paid time off or sick days if they contracted the virus. The federal relief package initially passed by Congress required employers to provide paid sick time but that…

Anyone who thinks that moving an elderly parent out of her home and into a facility will eliminate the need for most of the care they’ve been providing should think again. Two University of Pennsylvania researchers added up the hours that adult children, spouses and other unpaid caregivers provide when loved ones are in assisted living, nursing homes and other facilities. For example, informal caregivers put in only about a fourth of the hours at nursing homes that they would if their loved one were still living at home – that’s no doubt one reason for moving in the first place. But they still do an awful lot. Informal caregivers spend an average of 37 hours per month helping someon…

Roughly three out of four low-income households might not have enough money to maintain even their modest standard of living after they retire. This sobering finding comes in a refinement by the Center for Retirement Research of its periodic look at workers’ retirement prospects. The center’s researchers use the data in the Federal Reserve’s periodic Survey of Consumer Finances to estimate how workers are doing. And time after time, they arrive at a similar conclusion: in the 2019 survey, roughly half of all working households were at risk of falling at least 10 percent short of the income they’ll need to maintain their current living standard in retirement. But a second analysis of the 2019 data split the households into…

Picture an older warehouse worker whose back pain might qualify him for a federal cash benefit for his disability. If he’s right and his application is approved, he would get the Medicare health insurance he needs to manage his condition. But there’s a problem. Applicants often quit their jobs to strengthen the case for disability. But quitting would mean giving up his employer’s health insurance and going without coverage during the two-year waiting period for the Medicare that follows approval for disability benefits. Economists have a name for this predicament: job lock. A new study finds that the expansion of the Medicaid health insurance program, which has now spread to 40 states, opens up a new path for disabled workers…

My husband’s family has a nice tradition. They go around the table, and each person says what they’re thankful for. What they say changes with the passing years, depending on their joys and crises and sometimes on world events.   The staff at Squared Away and the blog’s sponsor, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, wish you a wonderful day of Thanksgiving with family and friends. Squared Away writer Kim Blanton invites you to follow us on Twitter @SquaredAwayBC. To stay current on our blog, please join our free email list. You’ll receive just one email each week – with links to the two new posts for that week – when you sign up here.  This blog is supported by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston Colleg…

This is a fun TED talk on a topic all of us can relate to: procrastination. It is relevant to a central theme of this blog: retirement. Research shows that procrastination plays at least a small role in why so many U.S. workers haven’t saved enough to retire in the lifestyle they’re accustomed to. The urgency of saving early has never been truer than it is for Millennials and Gen-Z. More on that later. First, let Tim Urban explain his theory about procrastination. He is a master procrastinator, demonstrated by his handling of his senior college thesis, a year-long project jammed into three days that included two all-nighters. He argues that when a deadline is fast approaching, procrastinators panic and…

Single mothers receive three-fourths of the tax refunds the IRS pays out every year through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low-income workers. The EITC’s big plus is that it’s fully refundable. In contrast to nonrefundable tax credits that reduce the taxes a worker already owes, the EITC gives refunds even if they don’t owe anything, as is often the case with low-income workers. Another plus is the amount in an EITC refund, which is sizable relative to how much they earn. These advantages are important because they create a financial incentive for new mothers to get back to work quickly so they can claim the credit at tax time. Congress in 1993 enhanced that incentive by hiking t…

The first place most people say they would go for information about Social Security’s various benefits is family and friends. That’s true whether they are Black, White, Asian, or Hispanic. But after family and friends, there are few similarities in whom each group consults. And their preferences, revealed in a new survey, reflect differences in their socioeconomic circumstances and social networks. White workers, who are wealthier overall than Blacks and Hispanics, stand out for being more likely to say they would ask financial advisers and accountants about Social Security. Black and Hispanic workers more often would rely on social services agencies, and Blacks also ask for help at church. It’s crucial that people get accurate information about the Social Security…

Nearly 40 percent of Americans have delayed or skipped necessary medical care in the past year because they couldn’t afford it. How do we stack up to other developed countries? Dead last. Even the lowest-wage workers in places like Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom are better able to afford their care than the average U.S. worker. The cost barriers to U.S. healthcare, laid out in a new report by The Commonwealth Fund, are hardly earth-shattering news. Large deductibles, a sharp rise in 2023 premiums, the high cost of prescriptions, spotty insurance options, and providers’ poor billing practices – the multitude of problems continue. Many Americans, regardless of how much they earn or the quality of their insurance, “hav…

On-the-job injuries, like layoffs, are life-altering events. A worker can lose tens of thousands of dollars in earnings over many years as a result, according to a new RAND study. The researchers used data from California’s workers’ compensation system to investigate what happened to injured workers’ earnings over a 14-year period. They were interested in the people whose injuries were serious enough to prevent them from working for a significant amount of time. These injured workers, who had either a temporary or permanent disability and received workers’ compensation, were compared with workers with minor injuries who didn’t miss any work or were out for fewer than four days. After their injuries, the workers with significant lost time earned $920 less…

Boston’s years-long struggle to deal with the homeless encampment of tents and an open-air drug market near what city residents call “Mass and Cass” – the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard – is a testament to how intractable homelessness is. But on top of the difficulty of arranging housing in short supply in a high-cost city and addressing addiction, the problems facing the homelessness are compounded by age. One out of every three Americans nationwide who lacks housing is over 50. In Boston, the share of older homeless has been rising over the past decade as the baby boomer population gets older. Samara Scheckler, a researcher at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, said older peo…

In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act establishing the federal minimum wage. Yet Section 14(c) of the act allowed employers to pay people with disabilities less than the minimum wage. Under 14(c), these workers, who often have cognitive or intellectual disabilities, are earning as little as $4 or $5 per hour mainly through non-profit programs created to support them. This seems unfair from the perspective of the 23-year anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act giving people with disabilities the same rights as all other Americans. Advocates for the disabled like the Autistic Self Advocacy Network argue 14(c) should be repealed. This seems like the obvious solution until you consider what Laura Kovacovich’s mother has…