Squared Away Blog

Moves by state governments to improve access to food stamps have been very effective in increasing the number of retirees and people with disabilities who get the benefits, a new study finds. The states, given a wide berth to administer the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as they see fit, have responded in recent decades by easing access to food stamps for their low-income residents through a variety of policies. Many states have loosened the eligibility requirements by, for example, increasing the limits on the dollar amount of assets applicants are permitted to have or by automatically qualifying them when they receive other means-tested benefits. A second set of policies aim to reduce so-called transaction costs, which broadly…

Planning the Normandy invasion seems like a good comparison with the layers of logistics, to-do lists, emails, phone calls, and documentation required to move my mother from her Orlando-area home to assisted living near Boston, where I live. She was understandably reluctant to leave her home of 30-plus years. But I’m luckier than many baby boomers because elderly parents often refuse to move out. Mom liked the idea of having people in assisted living who would cook and clean for her and do her laundry. But what I believe finally convinced her that relocating was the best option were two hospital stays within 10 days last March in Orlando for two newly diagnosed conditions. I think she realized I could…

To help people through the COVID public health emergency, Congress barred the states from removing people from the Medicaid rolls in return for providing additional funding for their programs. In March, those pandemic-era protections expired and states are returning to the old practice of requiring residents to verify their eligibility to renew the coverage. As a result, many states have begun cutting Medicaid enrollment for reasons ranging from ineligibility to a failure to submit paperwork. KFF, a health research organization that has been tracking Medicaid enrollment post-pandemic, said that about three out of four people have who have lost their coverage were dropped for procedural reasons, such as not completing their paperwork or missing a deadline. This is a concern, KFF…

Juggling a job and being a mother is hard work. It’s much tougher if your child has a disability. And when these mothers look ahead to retiring, the challenges are just as complex as their current situations. One woman whose daughter has a disability predicted in a recent interview with a researcher that she’ll work until she’s at least 72. “I need to be earning up until that point in order to make sure that I have more set aside for my daughter. And I don’t consider my needs primary. I consider hers to be primary,” she said. Another working mother worried, “Is my son going to be living with us? Is he going to be able to go off…

The baby boomers born in the early 1960s, at the tail end of the demographic wave, had about $280,000 in retirement wealth when they reached their early 50s. That’s significantly less – about $50,000 less – than the late-1950s boomers had at the same age. Some of this shortfall might’ve been anticipated for the youngest boomers. Each new crop of boomers has taken a bigger hit in their Social Security checks because the statutory age for collecting the full monthly benefit has been creeping up. The shrinking checks are against the backdrop of dwindling pensions. (Retirement wealth includes the current value of worker’s future Social Security and traditional pension benefits, as well as retirement savings.) But, while Social Security and…

The number of U.S. households ages 70 and over who have written a will has been dropping for at least 20 years, to about two-thirds today. But a new study that looks under the hood of estate planning in this country shows that the matter of whether someone has a will often comes down to race: older Black and Hispanic households are much less likely to have them than non-Hispanic Whites. The researchers also confirm that having a will is crucial to the successful transfer of a meaningful amount of wealth to one’s intended heir or heirs. In this way, wills can be an effective way to ensure that intergenerational wealth is being preserved and passed on within Black and…

The vast majority of workers are in traditional jobs, receiving a regular paycheck from an employer or their own business. But a small and growing number are filling nontraditional jobs, working not as employees but as contractors for all types of businesses or online services such as Uber and Care.com.  In just four years, the share of nontraditional workers increased by a full percentage point, to nearly 5 percent of the U.S. labor force, according to a new study based on U.S. Census data. Because these workers are still only a fraction of workers, little has been known about them. RAND researchers have uncovered new information about who they are. Putting various clues in the data together, they concluded that…

The maiden voyage next January of the 250,800-ton cruise ship, Icon of the Seas, with 20 decks of candy-colored amenities, has sold out. The Cruise Lines International Association predicts the industry’s 2023 passenger volume should exceed 2019 levels. Cruises, after going over a financial cliff during COVID, are back! And so is the credit card debt that pays for cruises. Travel in the form of hotels, airline tickets and cruises, and retail sales of everything from household appliances and glassware to restaurants – these are just some of the ways Americans are continuing a post-COVID spending spree fueled by more than a year of rock-bottom unemployment. Consumers racked up $45 billion more credit card debt in the second quarter, pushing…

U.S. workers’ enthusiasm for saving money for retirement is lukewarm. But that doesn’t go very far in explaining why only three out of every 10 Latino workers are participating in an employer retirement plan, typically a 401(k). The major reason is that most of them do not have a retirement plan because they are employed in low-wage blue-collar or service industries – roofing, dishwashing, food preparation, landscaping, hotels, maid and janitorial services. These types of jobs are often filled by recent or undocumented immigrants and do not include any employee benefits.  The Economic Policy Institute estimates that only four out of 10 Latino workers have a retirement plan in their current jobs. In that light, the bulk of the individuals…

German legislation that increased the federal pension credits given to mothers has influenced their decisions about working in middle age, years after their children were born but long before retirement age. This finding from a recent study adds to what is currently understood about how changes made to future pensions can affect how much workers choose to work now or when to retire. Previous research tended to gauge the impact of pension reforms on individuals who are closing in on their retirement years. This study focuses squarely on the behavior of mothers who are mostly in their early 50s, when workers are just starting to get serious about their retirement plans. The retirement benefits paid to German workers by t…

Too many retirees of color are in the financially precarious state between outright poverty and barely getting by. Far larger shares of the nation’s Latino, Black, Asian, and Native American retirees are financially insecure than Whites, according to a new report confirming the now-familiar racial disparities that face both workers and retirees in this country. But what also stands out in this report, produced by The Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, is the gaping disparity between retired single people and married couples. First, consider older White Americans. They are in the best position financially. Yet about two in five single White retirees are financially insecure, while only one in five couples is. Single Latino retirees are muc…

In COVID’s early months, applications to two of Social Security’s assistance programs fell sharply. The decline was nearly 30 percent in the spring and summer of 2020 for the monthly cash payments from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program to the families of children with disabilities. And applications for disability insurance benefits by adults with disabilities who could no longer work fell by more than 7 percent. Two recent studies reached a similar conclusion about what went on. A major reason for fewer applications was Social Security’s decision to close its field offices during COVID in March 2020, which eliminated the ability to apply in person for the benefits. Specifically, Mathematica researchers found, applications to the SSI and disability insuranc…