GBO NEWS: U.S. Frowns at U.N. Happiness Report; New MetLife Journalists
GBO NEWS: GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations
Sept. 12, 2013 — Volume 13, Number 13
Editor’s Note: The new “GBO News” marks the 20th year of the Journalists Network on Generations. Click through this table of contents to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. This format is “scalable” for computer, e-pad or mobile. Let us know what you think of the new format.
IN THIS ISSUE: Ain’t Gonna Study War on the Debt Ceiling No More.
1. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL: United Nations 2013 “World Happiness Report”; *** Unhappy Retirements for Minorities and Women, Says Economic Policy Institute Report; *** How Happy Are Grandparents? Asks UCLA Study; *** Poor Local Coverage Inequality Says Media Matters Study
2. EYES ON THE PRIZE: 17 Selected for MetLife Journalists in Aging Fellowship; *** 14 Reporters at Columbia Journalism School’s Age Boom Academy; *** Health Data Journalism Workshop, Oct. 3-4
3. THE BOOK BEAT: Katy Butler’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door Gets Rave, Tour Dates and Review Copies Available for Journalists
4. BIFOCAL READS: The New York Times “Retirement” section—and a Note of Relationship Sagacity
1. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL
*** The United Nations is out with its 2013 “World Happiness Report,” and when it comes to their ranking, the U.S. emoticon shows more of a frowny face than the old “We’re Number One” smile. The annual “Happiness” quotient is based on a range of metrics, such as per capita GDP, social supports, healthy life expectancy at birth, freedom to make life choices and other positives and negatives, Topping the list are Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Canada – you know those “socialistic,” tax-and-spend bleeding-hearts, who actually take national pride in living longer and producing more. The United States” this year clocks in at No. 17, behind Panama and Mexico, but just ahead of Ireland, Luxembourg and Venezuela. El Salvador, No. 52, is at the bottom.
What’s that got to do with the joy of aging in America? Pretty much every week —reporters who peer into the well-being of seniors get at least a couple of new reports to curl down the corners of one’s mouth.
*** Unhappy Retirements for Minorities and Women: Case in point: Washington Post financial writer Lydia DePillis reported Sept. 3, on a new and disturbing statistical chartbook from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Her piece, headlined, “401(k)s Are Replacing Pensions. That’s Making Inequality Worse,” explains that today’s dominant 401(k)s, “could deepen inequality among the elderly as the population ages.”
(Just a refresher: 401(k)s, which economists call “defined contribution” plans, require workers to pay into their own investment accounts, sometimes with a matching employer contribution, over traditional pensions (called “defined benefit” plans) that promise a set pension amount for retirees. While employees can take a 401(k) plan from job to job, the plans also let employers off the hook with smaller contributions and expose workers to the caprices of the stock market.)
DePillis allows that as the market has expanded, the average size of retirement accounts has grown. “But the moral starts to change as you look underneath the numbers.” The chartbook, she explains, demonstrates that the percentage of workers declined significantly in employer-based retirement plans over the past couple decades. She notes, “That’s because the top-earning people are choosing to put a lot more money away, while those who earn less can’t afford to.” That’s what the “average” looks much healthier than the median.
She states that “generous pensions have gotten a bad rap” because companies and governments (like Detroit) have struggled to keeping up with their obligations. DePillis writes that when traditional pensions were more prevalent, they locked in retirement security for all of those lucky enough to have one. Now, especially with workers having a harder time dealing with immediate needs, putting away money for retirement is a trade-off they’re often not able to make–especially non-whites and the less educated.”
In the report, “Retirement Inequality Chartbook: How the 401(k) Revolution Created a Few Big Winners and Many Losers,” by EPI analysts Monique Morrissey and Natalie Sabadish say, “Retirement-income inequality has grown in part because most 401(k) participants are required to contribute to these plans in order to participate, whereas workers are automatically enrolled in [older] defined-benefit pensions and, in the private sector, are not required to contribute to these plans. Thus, higher-income workers are much more likely to participate.”
Morrissey and Sabadish stress that African American workers’ participation in employer-based retirement plans “used to be similar to that of white workers, but has lagged in recent years. Hispanic workers, who have always had low participation rates, have fallen even further behind.”
The overall effect on racial and ethnic groups, show Morrissey and Sabadish: “White households have more than six times as much saved in retirement accounts as Hispanic and black households.”
The report presents a series of statistical charts and graphs with figures that the report says “paint a picture of increasingly inadequate savings and retirement income for successive cohorts and growing disparities by income, race, ethnicity, education and marital status.”
The report adds, “The existence of a retirement system that does not work for most workers underscores the importance of preserving and strengthening Social Security, defending defined-benefit pensions for workers who have them, and seeking solutions for those who do not.”
*** How Happy Are Grandparents? As a fairly new one, GBO’s editor is tickled by little James Dylan, who is just now taking his first steps. But then again, I don’t have drop everything to take on primary parenting duties, the way 300,000 other California seniors must. A recent report, “The High Cost of Caring: Grandparents Raising Grandchildren,” says, “More than 20,000 care for their grandkids without any extended family assistance at home.”
The study, from UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, shows that older adults raising grandchildren alone “may be among the most vulnerable residents in California, due to the state’s high cost of living and low levels of public assistance.”
The report’s authors, UCLA’s D. Imelda Padilla-Frausto, MPH, and Steven P. Wallace, PhD, used the Elder Economic Security Standard Index (Elder Index) to examine what it takes for these families to make financial ends meet. In 2011, California’s Legislature made the Golden State the first in the nation to adopt the Elder Index as its official planning tool for its golden-age population.
A more accurate measure of poverty than the outdated federal poverty level (FPL), the Elder Index includes such factors as the high out-of-pocket health care costs for older adults, transportation and variations in the cost of living, such as between urban and rural areas.
The UCLA research brief show that “nearly half of custodial grandparents who are 65 and over in California do not have enough income to cover the most basic needs of the grandchildren placed in their care. Yet public programs that might provide benefits that could help grandparents cope, such as the state foster-care program, are often difficult to access or off-limits altogether for family caregivers.”
Susan E. Smith, director of the Insight Center’s California Elder Economic Security Initiative, said many older adults in California are ineligible for public programs like Medi-Cal (the state’s Medicaid program), housing subsidies and food benefits because they have incomes that are above, often just slightly, the FPL.
The FPL for a family of three in 2011 was $18,530, and for a family of two, it was $14,710. But to actually make ends meet, for example, an older couple with one grandchild who lived in a two-bedroom rental needed an income as high as $49,942 if they lived in Santa Cruz County and as low as $32,965 if they lived in Kern, the “lowest-cost” county.
The study recommends “raising the eligibility criteria for certain public programs to 200 percent of the FPL; extending state foster-care benefits to kinship caregivers; and limiting the frequency of cumbersome and bureaucratic benefit renewals (since most older adults live on fixed incomes and thus do not experience income fluctuations that require regular documenting).”
*** So how’s the coverage of all that inequality? A new media analysis by the progressive Washington organization Media Matters is titled, “Local Papers Miss Story on Income Inequality.” The study found, “Over the past three months, major print outlets throughout the country largely failed to discuss rising structural inequality and poverty in the United States while reporting on policies and programs that affect low-income groups.
Media Matters conducted a Nexis search of articles in major metropolitan dailies in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Miami, Pittsburgh and St. Louis from June 1 through August 31. According to the study, “The major print outlets analyzed for this report published 456 articles that provided substantial discussion of policies and programs that have disproportionate effects on lower income groups. Of the total number of articles, only 88 — roughly 19 percent — mentioned rising inequality or poverty in the United States.”
At the top, they found, the Boston Globe mentioned inequality in 28.6 percent of relevant articles, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution mentioned inequality 24.4 percent of the time. Dragging at the bottom were the Chicago Tribune (6.4 percent) and Denver Post (4 percent).
2. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** 17 Selected for MetLife Journalists in Aging Fellowship:
Seventeen journalists proposing a wide range of in-depth projects, from the shortage of health care workers to serve Alaska natives to gambling addiction among seniors in Upstate New York, were selected for the fourth year of the MetLife Foundation Journalists in Aging Fellows program, a collaboration of the Gerontological Society of America’s (GSA) and New America Media (NAM), in cooperation with GBO News’ publisher, the Journalists Network on Generations.
The program will bring reporters from both ethnic media and general-audience press to New Orleans, Nov. 20-24 (all expenses-paid) to GSA’s 66th Annual Scientific Meeting to research their proposed projects. Each Fellow will receive a stipend of $1,500.
This year’s fellows and their in-depth projects are:
Jason Alcorn, Associate Director, InvestigateWest, Seattle. Project: Focus on Alzheimer’s in Washington State, among states that have not created a 10-year Alzheimer’s care plan.
Matthew S. Bajko, Reporter, Bay Area Reporter (San Francisco-area LGBT weekly newspaper). Project: How San Francisco plans to fulfill recommendations of its LGBT Aging Policy Task Force report.
Jose de la Isla, Columnist, Scripps Howard’s Hispanic Link News Service, Washington, D.C.. Project: Immigrant Latino caregivers (often undocumented) working “off the books.”
Salim Essaid, freelance producer, ART America’s weekly program “The Bridge,” Arabic language radio, New York City. Project: Chronic conditions older Arabs are prone to and how traditional Arab cultural values interact with American medical practice.
Joaqlin Estus, News Director,KNBA-FM “Alaska’s Native Voice,” Anchorage, AK. Project: Series on shortage of health care workers, new health technologies/telemedicine and related topics.
Christopher Farrell, freelance, NPR’s Next Avenue website, St. Paul, Minn. Project: Retirement and work challenges for older immigrants (Chinese elders in San Francisco and Hmong seniors in St. Paul, Minn.
Elizabeth Isele, blogger, PBS NextAvenue.org and Forbes.com, Washington, D.C. area. Project: Older middle- and lower-income seniors in the Longevity Economy.
Colleen Ann Keane, freelance, Navajo Times, Albuquerque, N.M. Project: Profile of three traditional Navajo artisans preserving heritage for new generations.
Yanick Rice Lamb, freelance, theGrio.com (MSNBC African American website), Washington, D.C. area. Project: Caregiving and dementia-care guide for African Americans.
Jennifer Margulis, freelance, AARP The Magazine, Ashland, Ore. Project: National shortage of home health aides and growing issue of financial and other abuses by unchecked aides.
Melinda Miller, Reporter, The Buffalo News, Buffalo, N.Y. Project: Gambling addiction among elders and casinos that target them.
Wallace Roberts, freelance, NAACP’s The Crisis Magazine, Williamstown, Vt. Project: Racism in long-term care and Medicaid for African American seniors.
Gary Rotstein, Reporter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Pa. Project: End-of-life and palliative care.
Connie Sexton, Reporter, Arizona Republic, Phoenix. Project: Palliative care.
Alice Thomas-Tisdale, Editor, Jackson Advocate Newspaper, Jackson, Miss. Project: Nursing home care in Mississippi’s inner city and rural facilities.
Dawn M. Williams Associate Publisher, Senior News 50 and Better! (12 editions in Chicago and Northern Illinois). Project: Series on healthy aging through physical activity and good nutrition.
Veronica Zaragovia, Reporter, KUT Public Radio, Austin, Tex. – Series on life and health access in urban Texas and the rural Rio Grande Valley, resources for Vietnam veterans suffering from mental distress and addiction; challenges facing same-sex elderly couples.
In addition, the program will provide travel grants to a group of previous MetLife fellows on aging, who applied to attend this year’s GSA conference. More about them in a later issue.
Keep in mind that GSA will provide complimentary media registrations to reporters requesting press credentials from their Communications Director Todd Kluss. Contact him at tkluss@geron.org. This interested can look over the conference information at www.geron.org. Ask Kluss for the link to the searchable online conference program. There will also be daily press-lunch programs and a special reception for attending reporters.
*** Age Boom Academy Wrapped up Tuesday at the Columbia School of Journalism, with the stellar contingent of expert speakers on all things aging we noted in our last issue, and then some. The program, started in 2000 by the International Longevity Center is now organized by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Graduate School of Journalism Continuing Education Division, in conjunction with the Center. The final list of reporters chosen for the program included: author blogger and “anti-ageism activist” Ashton Applewhite; Washington Post staff writer Tara Bahrampour; health and aging freelancer (and sometimes GBONews contributor Eileen Beal; Irish Times Health Correspondent Paul Cullen; New York Times Metro freelance regular Angela Macropoulos; investigative reporter Niall McCracken, for Northern Ireland’s “The Detail” (www.thedetail.tv); Salt Lake Tribune reporter Kristen Moulton; Sarasota Herald Tribune generations beat reporter, Barbara Peters Smith; Monterey County Weekly staff writer Sara Rubin; Huffington Post blogger and social workers Paula Seefeldt; Forum Publishing Group reporter Marci Shatzman (South Florida Sun Sentinel and other Forum publications); health care communications writer-consultant Alison Szot; New Jersey and New York freelancer (and veteran newspaper reporter) Suzanne Travers; and New York Times business freelancer Amy Zipkin.
*** Health Data Journalism Workshop, Oct. 3-4: Reporters wanting to sharpen their skills in interpreting health care reports and statistics, such as from the U.S. Census or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, should check out the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) workshop on health data in Anaheim, Calif. Sessions will be geared both for “data newcomers and veterans – from spreadsheet basics to visualizing data online. You’ll come away with skills and ideas on teasing stories out of datasets and tools on presenting these stories.” The cost of the workshop is $40 for AHCJ members, or $100 will get you into the workshop plus a year’s membership. Limited travel stipends are available to help reporters defray some costs. For more information, contact Christy Stretz at 573-884-5606 or Christy@healthjournalism.org.
3. BOOK BEAT
Knocking on Heaven’s Door the new book by journalist Katy Butler about end-of-life care in the United States, which GBONews told you about last May, was released this week by Scribner’s with much media fanfare. The weekend Wall Street Journal carried a major excerpt of the book, and the New York Times Sunday Book Review included a rave the week by Stanford University medical professor Abraham Verghese this week that the book “is a thoroughly researched and compelling mix of personal narrative and hard-nosed reporting that captures just how flawed care at the end of life has become.”
Butler, who is based in the San Francisco area, is scheduled so far to make the national book-reading rounds throughout the fall in a range of cities, such as Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Denver; Montclair, N.J.; New York; Washington, D.C.; Boston; and Nashville; as well as numerous literary stops in the Bay Area. For an up-to-date list, click on the “Readings & Events” section of her website. And journalists can also get a schedule and request a media kit and review copy from Kate.Lloyd@simonandschuster.com.
4. BIFOCAL READS
The New York Times ran its periodic special “Retirement” section Tuesday (Sept. 10), with front page pieces by Times staffers Steven Greenhouse, statistically analyzing how American retirees use their time, and Reed Abelson, with a reminder that a prime beneficiary of the Affordable Care Act will be out-of-work pre-retirees still too young for Medicare coverage, Most additional entries include personal-finance pieces by freelancers, such as GBO News regulars John Wasik (with two articles), Kerry Hannon and others.
But GBO’s laurel for the paper’s sagest quote of the week goes to Times reporter John Leland in his profile last Sunday headlined, “Two Men, 58 Years and Counting. A Love Story,” Leland met Peter Cott, 89, and Kenneth Leedom, 88, because they live in the same retirement home as his mother.
Although ostensibly a profile of a loving and sometimes ticklishly testy gay couple, two past mavens of New York arts society, Leland frames their relationship for the ages in commenting, “Memory is a tricky thing: subjective, malleable to the needs of narrative or the fog of time. Some linguists believe that preliterate societies used myths to preserve their collective memories, and it seems possible, or at least poetic, that the style of memory is toward constructive storymaking, not simple retention. We remember the stories we tell about our lives; we invent our lives in the remembering.”
So, relationships, it seems are the true mother of invention.
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