split pills, live without basic utilities such as air conditioning
or a phone, and show up at food kitchens when their grocery
money runs out. This is the invisible group that falls into a
gap between the destitute (who are eligible for government
services) and the lower middle class. The Census Bureau’s
poverty threshold “is not even half of what a senior needs to
make it,” says Paul Downey, president-elect of the National
Association of Nutrition and Aging Services Programs. “We
have come up with a convenient method to bury our head
in the sand. So long as we use the federal poverty level as
our measurement, we can pat ourselves on the back and say,
‘Gee, we’re doing a good job.’”
If you’re wondering why there’s such a stark
difference between official statistics and hard reality, consider this: the federal government defines poverty using a
formula more than 40 years old.
In the 1960s a Social Security Administration economist
named Mollie Orshansky took the cost of a bare-bones diet
and multiplied it by three, creating the basis for all future
“IT’S EMBARRASSING TO GO FROM THE LAP OF LUXURY TO A GENTLE- MAN OF THE ROAD, ALMOST. I CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT’S HAPPENED.”
—Ronald Green, 62, Las Vegas, Nevada
poverty benchmarks. Orshansky based her computation
on 1955 consumption patterns, when food accounted for
one-third of the average household budget.
That calculation doesn’t consider today’s housing and
health care costs, which have dramatically outpaced food
prices. Nor does it factor in geography. “Costs in Manhattan, Kansas, are not the same as they are in Manhattan,
New York,” says Stacy Sanders, associate director of the
Elder Economic Security Initiative at the nonprofit Wider
Opportunities for Women (WOW) in Washington, D.C.
Recognizing these disparities, the National Academy of
Sciences in 1995 unveiled an alternative poverty measure
that considered the costs of food, clothing, and shelter,
along with regional differences, income from government
benefits, and expenses such as medical costs. By the academy’s formula, 18. 7 percent of older Americans—more than
7 million individuals—live in poverty.
The academy’s recalculation created a vigorous buzz in
academic circles. But political pressure in the mid-1990s to
reduce the number of people on federal assistance stalled
all efforts to revise the poverty formula.
“If you were to update the traditional measure to accu-
rately reflect who’s struggling, you’d be increasing the
number of older people who are deemed to be in poverty,”
says Jenny Chung, an attorney with the Insight Center for
Community Economic Development in Oakland, California.
“I don’t think any politician wants to see poverty rise so
dramatically on their watch.”
Changing the poverty line would also create winners and
losers, adds Steven Wallace, associate director of UCLA’s
Center for Health Policy Research. For example, assuming
there’s no additional funding for programs, more of the ex-
isting money would be likely to flow toward city dwellers,
who have higher housing costs. That could spark resistance
from rural areas. “Because there would be a redistribution,
