Nearly one in three adults over 65 in Humboldt County live in an economic no-man’s land, unable to afford basic needs but often ineligible for government assistance, according to a new study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
Statewide, nearly 1 in 5 adults over 65 — more than three-quarters of a million people — find themselves in the income gap that makes them the “hidden poor.”
The study, funded by the California Wellness Foundation and released Aug. 31, highlights the plight of the hidden poor — those who live in the gap between the federal poverty level and the Elder Index’s poverty measure. The latter, calculated at a county level, is considered a more accurate cost estimate of what it takes to have a decent standard of living. It takes into account the geographic difference in costs for housing, medical care, food and transportation.
The national federal poverty level guidelines say a single, elderly adult living alone in 2011 should be able to live on $10,890 a year, while the Elder Index used during the study estimates that person renting in California on average required $23,364.
[For more of this story, written by Carol Harrison, go to http://www.times-standard.com/...ters-the-hidden-poor]
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