To: combjelly who wrote (84922 ) 7/20/2018 10:38:40 PM From: Katelew Read Replies (1) | Respond to <<Since its initial rapid decline after 1964 >> Interesting. I think Medicare was started up in 1965. Medicare had a huge impact on elderly poverty. When looking at poverty figures, it's important to remember that these numbers are derived simply from income tax returns. No one drives by to see where a "poor" person lives, what they drive, and where they shop. A divorced women can have a huge settlement but still produce a tax return that would qualify her as poor if she doesn't go to work. I think the biggest reason we have more "poor" and more people with low levels of savings is because of cultural changes. My generation married young. College was for finding mates, and once married shortly after graduating, a couple usually settled into a long range plan that included saving for that first house, buying furnishings for it, and starting a family. Once a baby came along, they would then get even more serious about working hard and saving money. There was group pressure on all of us to behave this way, and while it meant postponing travel and finer cars, etc. until one was older, we all as a group tended to become prosperous at younger ages. Our tax returns reflected that. Now we have a culture where people postpone marriage and child bearing and replace them with dating, travel and entertaining. The ratio between spending and saving is reversed. Much less pressure to work hard in order to support the kids means many aren't advancing as quickly in their careers as their parents generation did. In this culture, more individual tax returns are being filed relative to a tax return that shows the result of two incomes. In this culture, there is the appearance of more "poverty" when it might be only reflecting carefree single people who are slow to get off the starting block. So I'm not sure how much we should trust these numbers when making policy, especially welfare policy. In otherwords, if significant numbers of people past the age of 35 are still content to be single and sharing an apartment, living month to month or even working in the gig economy so they can travel the world and avoid stressful careers, are they poor or are they living the good life?
