The Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing yesterday on Enhancing Women's Retirement. The hearing featured a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). There is much in the report that is interesting but not directly relevant to the subject of this blog, such as the fact that the poverty rate among married women and men 65 and older is 3%, while the poverty rate in this age group among separated men is 20% and among separated women it's 22%. Also, Asians 65 and older have a higher poverty rate than whites, blacks or hispanics. Didn't see that one coming. Of relevance to Social Security are these facts:
- The majority of women claim Social Security retirement benefits at 62 - the earliest age possible.
- Only 18 percent of women wait until their normal retirement age of 66 or later.
3 comments:
The reason for the high Asian poverty rate for those 65+ is likely explained by Asian seniors emigrating to the US as seniors, where they can immediately begin drawing SSI.
As for retirement in general, SSA has a habit of trying to get early retirees on disability (an idiotic idea in my not so humble opinion), so many women choosing to start drawing retirement at age 62 are likely ending up on disability first (especially since the rules for disability are so lax at that age).
Anon 12:47, you could not be more wrong, and are under the impression of a lot of people.To actually receive SSI benefits an individual must be a resident of the U.S. as defined in GN 00303.720
You cannot just move here and get benefits.
The second part I cannot make enough sense out of to figure out what you are saying. As a SSA CR I can tell you we never "tried to get retirees on disability", by law we are required to ask if a person has a condition that stops them from working for 12 consecutive months or will end in death. Perhaps you need to look elsewhere for your talking points.
If by "Asian" you include the Indian subcontinent, then this would be caused by Asian seniors moving here to live with their children who are doctors--from India and Pakistan--and NOT getting SSI because of the actual SSI rules. We have whole neighborhoods populated by such folks in our service area. They have no income, thus living in "poverty" but live in $ 300,000 homes in an area with average home prices of $150,000.
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