NCOA Launches One Away Campaign for Elder Economic Security; Releases National Poll on Struggles Facing Older Adults

Ken Schwartz, NCOA Director, Marketing & Communications, 202-600-3131, ken.schwartz@ncoa.org

Washington, D.C. (March 31, 2011) – More than 13 million older adults are considered economically insecure, living on just $21,780 a year or less. Every day, these seniors, and millions of Boomers, have to choose whether to pay for food, housing, utilities, or out-of-pocket for medication costs. They live one bad break, one accident, or one layoff away from economic disaster.

To spotlight their struggles—and call for change—the National Council on Aging (NCOA) is launching One Away, an innovative, national advocacy campaign that uses video to allow older adults to tell their own stories, in their own words. One Away videos and stories are available at OneAway.org.

“We are already receiving real stories of seniors who are struggling,” said Sandra Nathan, senior vice president for economic security at NCOA. “It’s clear that vulnerable older adults are in desperate need of help and want to be heard.”

National Poll Shows Depth of Problem

Almost two-thirds (63%) of adults aged 18+ said they or an older adult they know is struggling to make ends meet in today’s economy, according to the new One Away poll. A majority (62%) also knows that one out of three older adults relies on Social Security for over 90% of their income.

Commissioned by NCOA and conducted online in March 2011 by Harris Interactive, the One Away poll of 2,526 adults aged 18 and older also found that 80% of adults know that older workers who lose a job are more likely to face very long-term unemployment, up to 99 weeks or more.

In spite of this harsh reality, the House of Representatives recently passed legislation to cut funding by 64% for the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP), our nation’s only jobs program designed to help older Americans in need. The cut would result in the loss of over 83,000 jobs.

At the same time, some economic challenges facing older adults are less well known to the public:

Fewer than 1 out of 5 people (19%) are aware of the scale of senior credit card debt, which averages $10,000.


Only 34% are aware that people over age 65 make up the fastest-growing segment of the population seeking bankruptcy protection.


Almost three-quarters (72%) either underestimated or did not know that nearly 6 million seniors are at risk of going hungry every day.

“The struggles seniors are facing are all too often overlooked or dismissed,” said James Firman, president and CEO of NCOA. “This campaign is about elevating their voices, and we need Congress to catch up to the realities of their constituents and develop concrete solutions to make life better for our seniors.”

As part of the One Away campaign, NCOA has also published A Blueprint for Increasing the Economic Security of Older Adults: Reauthorizing the Older Americans Act. The report outlines specific recommendations to improve elders’ economic security through reauthorization of the Older Americans Act (OAA), which is scheduled to occur this year.

Funding for the One Away campaign was provided by The Atlantic Philanthropies.

TIME GOES BY | GRAY MATTERS: Hunger and Shame

By Saul Friedman
My mother, may she rest in peace, would have called this a shanda, the Yiddish word for a shame, something you’re not proud of and that you’d rather your neighbor doesn’t find out.

So shame is what I thought about and felt when I read the latest survey by academic researchers for the Meals on Wheels Association of America. It found that in 2008, at the beginning of this Great Recession, nearly six percent of Americans over the age of 60 - more than 2.7 million - suffered from hunger. Not just the lack of enough food, but hunger. In the United States of America in the 21st Century.

But the deeper shame was in the 2009 survey which found that the trend upward was especially discernible between 2001 and 2007 - the years of tax cuts for the wealthy and a couple of pointless wars - when the number of older people (especially women) experiencing hunger rose by 700,000 to upwards of 3 million.

Now, as a result of the recession, when many programs for the aged and poor were reduced, partly to pay for those tax cuts, that figure has reached to over 3 million and with unemployment more than 10 percent, the figure is still climbing.

The highest concentration of hunger risk among older people are in those states with low or no income taxes and fewer social insurance programs: Mississippi, South Carolina, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina and Oklahoma. These states, most of them conservative, also have higher concentration people with only a high school education, plus a higher number of blacks and Hispanics and older people living in poverty. The south remains the most ignorant and badly-led part of the country.
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Health Populi: The eighth deadly sin is hunger, especially among seniors

Americans living in the south are the hungriest citizens in the nation, according to a study from the Meals on Wheels Association (MOWA).

Senior Hunger in the United States: Differences Across States and Rural Areas discovered that underneath the overall statistic that hunger is a growing industry in the U.S., it's even worse among older Americans. 700,000 more seniors faced the risks of hunger in 2007 than in 2001, MOWA found.

There is great geographic variability for senior hunger: the risk of hunger among seniors ranges from a low of 1.5% in North Dakota to 12.3% in Mississippi.

Health Populi's Hot Points: Being marginally food insecure is roughly equivalent to being 14 years older, MOWA calculates. Senior hunger puts older people at risk of being in poor or fair health (versus good health); having lower intakes of energy and vitamins; and, losing the ability to conduct the normal activities of daily living (ADLs).

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Full Report

Podcast: Food Insecurity — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

In this podcast, Keri Fulton and Stacy Dean, the Center’s Director of Food Assistance Policy, discuss how food insecurity affects families living near the poverty line.

Listen to Podcast or Read Transcript