Elderly Women and Poverty: Gender, Age, and Housing

Introduction: Gender and Late-Life Poverty

In America we are often told that anyone can succeed. All you need to do is work hard. Of course, it helps to be smart. And, of course, it helps to be white. And, of course, it helps to have a well-connected family — and generally to have the kind of luck that means you don't get hit by a car, a meteor, or a particularly virulent form of cancer. And, of course, more than almost anything else, it helps to be a man. One of the most accurate predictors of who will spend their old age in poverty is gender. Women end up poor at disproportionate rates, which affects every aspect of their lives. This paper examines one aspect of the intersection of poverty and gender: the relationship among female status, poverty, age, and housing.

Demographic Patterns Among Older Women

Before exploring the reasons why women tend to end their lives in poverty — and in housing conditions that reflect their lack of wealth — it is useful to note several basic demographic facts. According to the U.S. Social Security Administration, which tracks such figures for the entire U.S. population, women across all marital statuses are economically worse off than men with the same status. Never-married women are poorer than never-married men, widows are poorer than widowers, and divorcées are poorer than divorced men. There are also important effects related to geographic region. Even more significant, as discussed below, is whether one lives in a rural, urban, or suburban area — a factor that directly influences what types of housing are available.

A number of demographic factors intersect with race and affect the financial stability of older women. None of these, however, alter the basic pattern described above. White women tend to be better off financially than women of color, for example, but the same gender disparity holds within each racial group. Educational attainment also matters for late-life financial stability, yet women at every level of education remain poorer than men in the same educational category. If one knows only a single fact about two people and wishes to make an accurate guess about which is more likely to be poor, the single most useful fact is their gender.

Finally, sexual orientation also makes a substantial difference, likely in large measure because of the ways in which laws have historically favored heterosexual couples. Lesbians are poorer than their heterosexual counterparts in all categories and are also poorer in old age than gay men. It should be noted that while the focus of this paper is older women, women are also poorer than men at every other stage of the lifecycle.

A large body of research has examined why older women are significantly more likely to be poor than older men. While this is not the main focus of this paper, it is essential to summarize these factors, since the housing choices available to women in their final decades cannot be understood without a clear grasp of the disadvantages that have accumulated over the course of their lives.

Career Interruptions and Lifetime Earnings

Scholars generally agree on the reasons why women are financially less secure than men. As the following discussion makes clear, this is one of those areas in which understanding the contributing factors does not translate easily into public policy solutions. The most important reason women tend to face poverty in old age is that they still provide the lion's share of childcare (Vartanian & McNamara, 2002).

As the primary caregivers of a family's children — and, in many cases, of aging relatives as well — women have far fewer job options than men who do not carry similar family responsibilities. This fact alone has substantial effects on a woman's lifelong earnings, her retirement and pension options, and her late-life choices regarding housing, healthcare, and related needs. Women are far more likely than men to take several years away from work during what would otherwise be their most financially productive years.

Women are typically in their twenties or thirties when they step away from paid employment to have and raise children. These decades are generally not the highest-earning years — peak compensation tends to come toward the end of a working life. However, by leaving the workforce at the same time that peers are establishing themselves professionally, women who become primary caregivers effectively consign themselves to lower incomes and less prestigious positions for the remainder of their careers. This decision carries ongoing economic consequences long after children — and even grandchildren or great-grandchildren — have grown.

Diane and Lichter (1997) found that women are generally aware of this pattern: their research subjects knew that having children would significantly reduce their potential for financially rewarding careers. (One can reasonably assume that women today are even more aware of this trade-off.) So why do women still choose to leave the professional world to raise children? There are complex cultural, emotional, and psychological reasons, but the bottom line tends to be — quite literally — the bottom line.

Because men tend to earn more than women in every field, and because men are more likely to work in higher-status, better-paying occupations, men generally hold greater economic standing within their households. When a family must decide which parent should leave work to raise children, the mother becomes the "natural" choice because she is contributing less financially (Dodson & Schmalzbauer, 2005).

A woman's departure from the labor market to bear and raise children — even for just a few years — affects not only her lifetime earning potential but has several other consequences as well. Women qualify for lower pensions and reduced Social Security benefits, and are likely to have accumulated less savings than men. This is partly a result of lower salaries, but it also reflects a psychological dependence regarding money that women are culturally conditioned to adopt (Seccombe, 2000).

Conclusion

Gender remains one of the strongest predictors of poverty in old age. The economic disadvantages women face are not random; they are the product of structural forces operating across decades of a woman's life. Addressing housing insecurity among elderly women requires recognizing and confronting the full chain of inequalities — in labor markets, caregiving expectations, and financial decision-making — that produce it.