Poverty rates jump among Calif. seniors
By Claudia Buck and Phillip Reese, Sacramento Bee
The older you are, the poorer you get.
For a growing number of California seniors living on the edges of poverty, that’s the uncomfortable reality.
In the Sacramento region, the number of residents 65 and older living at or below the federal poverty line – $11,400 for a single individual – roughly doubled from 2005 to 2014, according to a Sacramento Bee review of U.S. census data. That means 28,000 seniors, or 9 percent of the region’s elderly population, are officially considered poor.
Statewide, the number of impoverished residents age 65 and older increased by 85 percent, to roughly 520,000, between 1999 and 2014, more than double the rate of population growth among the elderly.
Poverty among seniors is not new, but has been exacerbated in recent years by a cyclone of factors, especially in California.
