GBO NEWS: Race, Wealth and Retirement; March Mindefulness; The Storyboard; & More
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations
Editor’s Note: GBO News, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generation publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. You can subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge simply by sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. You’ll receive the table of contents as e-mail, just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org.
IN THIS ISSUE: Are Our Solutions Scalable, Yet?
1. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL: Race, Wealth and Illusions of Retirement Security: Urban Institute’s “Nine Charts About Wealth Inequality in America”; *** “The Great Illusion of Retirement Savings” in Huffington Post
2. RESOURCES: Eldercare App for Hospitalizations; ***Justice in Aging newly minted name of National Senior Citizen Law Center; *** Health Journalism 2015 Conference, April 23-25, includes Latest Research on Aging and session on Covering Palliative Care
3. THE BOOKMOBILE: ***Mirrors of the Mind: Reflecting on Philosophers’ Autobiographies (Ron Manheimer’s book for March Mindefulness); ***Trusting Amazon?
*** “If Alzheimer’s Is in Her Future, She Wants to Write Her Own Ending,” by Michael Vitez, Philadelphia Inquirer;
*** “Reimaging Life” (aging with HIV) by Mikael Wagner San Francisco Bay Times;
*** “Aging Latinos: Increasing Diversity Will Increase Challenges for Aging Network,” by Janice Lynch Schuster, AHCJ “Tip Sheet” on Aging;
*** Series on Ohio Financial Elder Abuse by Encarnacion Pyle, Columbus Dispatch;
*** “Experts, Seniors Tell CA Lawmakers ‘Hear Us’ on Rising Elder Poverty,” by Paul Kleyman, New America Media;
*** “Many Fears Stalk the Aging As Safety Nets Shrink; Media Stereotypes Miss the Full Story,” by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet;
*** “Technology Helps Seniors Remain at Home,” by Sally Abrahms, Kiplinger’s Retirement Report.
1. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL: Race, Wealth and Illusions of Retirement Security
*** “Nine Charts About Wealth Inequality in America” is a recent and telling analysis from the Urban Institute (UI) depicting how race and age have widened and income gap in the United States over the past half century. At a time when headlines are focused on 50th anniversaries, this brief statistical report illustrates the wealth gap between 1963 and 2013.
Chart 1 (“Wealth Inequality Is Growing”) encapsulates what most know by now: The Poor have gotten poorer — “Families near the bottom of the wealth distribution (those at the [lowest] 10th percentile) went from having no wealth on average to being about $2,000 in debt.” That happened while the nation’s most affluent10 percent saw a quadrupling of their wealth — except for the top 1 percent, who gained proportionately six times more than they held in 1963.
Chart 2 explains that wealth (family assets, such as savings, real estate an maybe a business—minus any debt) depends in the long run on income. “Wealth cushions families against emergencies and gives them the means to move up the economic ladder,” says the report. In the United States, with far more to accumulate and invest, “We see that families near the top had a 70 percent increase in income from 1963 to 2013, while the income of families at the bottom stayed roughly the same,” say UI’s Signe-Mary McKernan and colleagues.
Chart 3 shows that even though ethnic and racially diverse families are on track to become America’s minority majority, “most continue to fall behind whites in building wealth.” By 2013, the average white family had over $500,000 greater wealth than the average black family ($95,000) or Latino family ($112,000). “Put another way, white families on average had seven times the wealth of African American families and six times the wealth of Hispanic families in 2013,” state the researchers.
Chart 4 is titled “The Racial Wealth Gap Grows Sharply with Age.” Whites in their 30s, according to this graphic, hold on average triple the amount owned by black families ($140,000 more in wealth). “By their 60s, whites have over $1 million more in average wealth than African Americans (11 times as much).”
Chart 5 adds, “Differences in earnings add up over a lifetime and widen the racial wealth gap.” Over their working lives, whites typically earn $2 million, African Americans bring in $1.5 million and Hispanics earn $1 million in the U.S. That sharply limits the ability of black and Latino families to build wealth.”
Chart 6 reveals that blacks and Latinos are less able to own homes. In 1983, 68 percent of white families owned their home versus 45 percent of African Americans and 41 percent of Hispanic families. “By 2013, the racial homeownership gap improved slightly for Hispanics, but it grew worse for African Americans,” says the report.
Chart 7, titled, “African American and Hispanic families have less in liquid retirement savings”: Liquid retirement is wonk-speak for savings that, unlike home equity, for example, can be converted to cash, such as dollars in a 401(k) and IRA. According to UI’s report, “In 2013, white families had over $100,000 more (or 7 to 11 times more) in average liquid retirement savings than African American and Hispanic families.” It goes on, “In sheer dollar terms, this disparity quadrupled over the past quarter-century.”
Chart 8: “African American families carry more student loan debt than white families.” This has grown sharply since the mid-2000s. By 2013, “42 percent of African Americans ages 25 to 55 had student loan debt, compared with 28 percent of whites.” One reason: “White families are five times more likely than African American families to receive large gifts or inheritances, which can be used to pay for college.” In addition, “people of color disproportionately attend for-profit schools, which have low graduation rates. This means that student loan debt doesn’t always translate into a degree that would promote economic mobility—and income and wealth—in the long run.”
Beyond income differences, says the UI paper, “African American and Hispanic families have slightly less access to retirement saving vehicles and lower participation when they have access. But lower access and participation isn’t the full story.” It’s well known, for instance, that Hispanic workers are less likely to participate in employer retirement plans than African American workers, even though they have similar average retirement savings.
The UI analysts stress that merely having more employers offer retirement plans “will not be enough to close the gap, especially if lower-income groups contribute smaller portions of their income to retirement plans and have a greater likelihood of withdrawing money early to cover financial emergencies.”
Chart 9: Here UI’s number crunchers enter the policy realm with, “Federal Policies Fail to Promote Asset Building by Lower-Income Families.” The blurb with the chart says that of the $384 billion 2013 the federal government spent to support asset development “those subsidies primarily benefited higher-income families—exacerbating wealth inequality and racial wealth disparities.”
While two-thirds of homeownership tax subsidies and retirement subsidies “go to the top 20 percent of taxpayers, the bottom 20 percent benefit from less than one percent of the subsidies–especially for African Americans and Hispanics.”
Although low-income families may receive food stamps and welfare, says the report, those benefits “do not encourage wealth-building and economic mobility in the long run.” Some such as Section 8 rental vouchers actually discourage savings since putting money away can jeopardize receiving the subsidy.
UI recommends six federal policy changes they believe “could help reduce wealth inequality and racial wealth disparities,” such as establishing universal children’s savings accounts with a federal match, which President Obama has called for, and reforming safety-net program means tests, so they no longer block lower-income families from saving as much as they can.
As with any policy prescriptions, reporters need to vet each of these. Automatic retirement savings accounts, for instance, have critics on both the right and left. But UI’s economics and policy crew has developed a concise and useful graphic set with this report.
*** “The Great Illusion of Retirement Savings,” by Nancy J. Altman and James W. Russell, Huffington Post (March16), offers a different view from two leading experts on pension issues. The writers state that the current financial-services focus on retirement is a “blame-the-victim approach, which seeks to force young workers to lock up savings for decades, is a misdiagnosis of the problem.”
Altman, co-founder of the advocacy group Social Security Works (and co-author of the new book with the same name), and Russell, author of Social Insecurity: 401(k)s and the Retirement Crisis (Beacon Press) assert that policy makers and “elites” in major business and political circles promote remedies to the looming retirement crisis apt to leave todays workers “in worse shape” at retirement.
They ask, “What if it is impossible to save enough for retirement? What if the individual savings approach that replaced guaranteed pensions simply doesn’t work? How much can a person of ordinary income realistically be expected to save after paying for increasingly expensive houses and college educations for children, not to mention a range of unpredictable other calamitous necessary expenses that can befall anyone?”
Allowing that savings are important, Altman and Russell note, “Individually saving and investing for retirement, it turns out, is the most inefficient and least fair way to finance retirement income.” Not only do people of ordinary income not earn enough to put into retirement, they explain, “participants in retirement savings accounts lose, minimally, a quarter of all investment gains too often hidden administrative fees, commissions and other profits deducted by financial services companies.” In addition, widely-marketed annuities are often compromised by “commissions and other forms of profit taking.”
Altman and Russell call on policymakers to stop “enticing more participants into the doomed retirement savings crusade and accusing current participants of not saving enough through an approach that is loaded against them.” They conclude, “If the goal is to increase the retirement security of all Americans, then expanding Social Security, fighting to protect current employer-provided defined benefit plans, and figuring out the best way to establish new ones is the right cure.”
2. RESOURCES
*** Eldercare App for Hospitalizations: Thanks to gen-beat writer Eileen Beal for tipping GBONews off about the new app for helping seniors and caregivers prepare for a hospitalization and transitions between home, hospitals and nursing homes. It will be introduced next month by the nonprofit group, Nurses Improving Care for Healthsystem Elders (NICHE) at their annual conference, April 14-17, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.
According to the NICHE release, “The app contains information written in simple, easy-to-understand terms. Content covers 24 topics including guidance in dealing with delirium, dementia, depression, functional decline, hearing, medications, nutrition, safety, palliative care, surgery, transitions, vaccines and more. The app is organized for fast, easy navigation. Three checklists for going to, staying in and leaving the hospital help patients and caregivers throughout transitions. A ‘Find the Nearest NICHE Facility’ is included.”
Barbara Bricoli, NICHE executive director said, “A well informed patient and caregiver can more easily cope with hospitalization and transitions and communicate better with the healthcare team.” NICHE developed the new app with Baylor Scott and White’s Center for Learning Innovation and Practice, also in conjunction with the Center to Advance Palliative Care, the St. Louis Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association and the International Collaboration of Orthopaedic Nursing.
NICHE is an international program aimed at improving care of older adults. Based at the NYU College of Nursing, it has a network of over 620 hospitals and healthcare facilities from the U.S., Canada, Bermuda and Singapore. For more information visit the NICHE website. Reporters can contact Scott Bugg, 215-527-9351; scott@tsivisuals.com.
***Justice in Aging (JIA) is the newly minted name of National Senior Citizen Law Center, much to the relief of headline writers. Even though the new brand sounds a bit more like a bumper sticker than an organizational name, it’s definitely and improvement over the old NSCLC clunker. And we like the crisp new tag line, “Fighting Senior Poverty Through Law.” Founded in 1972, JIA has done some of the most significant advocacy and litigation in elderlaw, especially of late on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for impoverished seniors. The group has offices in Washington, D.C., and California. Their long-time staff attorney Kevin Prindiville became executive director last year and is among the more thoughtful and quotable sources we know of on issues of income and health insecurity. Gen-beat reporters should have him in your contacts list at 510-663-1055, ext. 1 (office); kprindiville@justiceinaging.org. Be sure to copy interview requests to their new communications director, Vanessa Barrington: (510) 256-1200; Cell: (415)-505-0116; vbarrington@justiceinaging.org.
***Health Journalism 2015, April 23-25 will bring hundreds of the top health reporters to the Hyatt Hotel in Santa Clara, Calif., to attend dozens of sessions presenting national experts on subjects from navigating HIPPA rules to genetics, to ebola and, yes, even to aging. A panel titled “Exploring the Latest Research in Aging” will feature the octogenarian Leonard Hayflick, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, developer of the “Hayflick limit,” which led to major findings on cellular aging; and S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Chicago, among others.
“Connecting with Your Audience About End-of-Life Care” will feature bestselling author (Knocking on Heaven’s Door) Katy Butler; V.J. Periyakoil, M.D., director, palliative care education and training, Stanford University School of Medicine; and G. Jay Westbrook, M.S., R.N., C.H.P.N., clinical director, Compassionate Journey. Moderating will be GBONews Editor Paul Kleyman, director, Ethnic Elders Newsbeat, New America Media.
This AHCJ national conference also offers some of the best networking opportunities around, such as workshops on pitching stories. Registration is still open: Go to healthjournalism.org/hj15.
3. THE BOOKMOBILE
*** Mirrors of the Mind: Reflecting on Philosophers’ Autobiographies by Ronald J. Manheimer, PhD, (Jorvik Press) might have been titled,The Encore Mind of the Gerontologist. When Manheimer retired in 2009 as executive director of the North Carolina Center for Creative Aging in Ashville, he’d been well regarded as a national innovator in older-adult education. His engaging 1999 book, Map to the End of Time (Norton), recounted his then 20-year experience of learning more from his elder students than, perhaps, they did from their teacher.
Manheimer allowed in an e-mail to GBONews that although Mirrors of the Mind isn’t focused on aging, it asks, “How does an expert in ‘creative retirement’ — retire?” In this case we recommend the book as engaging reading for your Spring Break – or call it March Mindfulness. After noodling over different post-retirement ideas, Manheimer found himself drifting back decades to an unfulfilled idea stemming from a course he co-taught as a grad student on “Philosophical Autobiography” in the History of Consciousness program at – where else? –the University of California in Santa Cruz. GBO’s editor is totally with those soft-cones on the boardwalk—the mind-tongue experience.
And I have to admit that Manheimer’s playful opening with its link between the philosophical drama of Søren Kierkegaard and the 1999 film Being John Malkovich, has me want to delve into how the lives of great thinkers—drawn from their own autobiographical reflections—informs their heady illuminations.
Manheimer examines self-reflections ranging from fourth century Augustine’s Confessions to 20th century Simone de Beauvoir’s The Prime of Life. Along the way he promises to explore the motivational heart of thinking by the likes of Rousseau, Heidegger, Sartre, Jung, Buber and Gandhi, among others. Often Dr. Manhemier’s riffs on references to the likes of Toni Morrison, Gail Sheehy, Rainer Maria Rilke and Star Wars. The coda for it all elevates from Kierkegaard’s dialogue in Either/Or where, writes Manheimer, the character of Judge Wilhelm asserts, “You have to not only ‘know yourself,’ but also tackle the equally difficult task: to ‘become yourself.’”
That might not be your idea of beach reading, but I’m in San Francisco, where I could just head down the coast to Santa Cruz with my copy in one hand, while trying not to drip on it from the vanilla cone in the other, all in the cause of becoming a sunnier, if not more mindful, self. From whatever beach or easy chair you’re near, you can request press information and a media review copy from Jorvik’s Peter Stansill: peter@jorvikpress.com.
*** Trusting Amazon?: It’s ironic that with so many authors objecting to Amazon due to their business tactics with certain publishers over pricing and trying to push readers into their Prime memberships, that so many writers get excited about where their titles fall on the amazon sales list. But has anyone else noticed their actual delivery problems. After ordering a recent independently published book otherwise not easily available, this editor received an e-mail from them stating that my order “has shipped!” It’s the third time I’ve had this happen in recent months. In fact, Amazon did not ship the book from its warehouse but only seems to have “shipped” the order to the small publishing house, which now, weeks later, still has not been delivered by mail, drone or Iditarod musher. “Has shipped!”– a deceptive customer-service claim? We also saw a substantial delay in shipping of an academic-press book not long ago. GBO’s current policy is to link titles here to Amazon only when other options aren’t easily evident. I’d be interested in readers’ thoughts and strategies for yourself or your reader links.
4. THE STORYBOARD
*** “If Alzheimer’s Is in Her Future, She Wants to Write Her Own Ending,” by Michael Vitez, Philadelphia Inquirer (March 18): Assisted suicide has been much in the news lately, with case of the young Brittany Maynard, 29, in Oregon, and Julianne Moore’s Oscar-winning performance of a brilliant linguist, who develops early-onset Alzheimer’s in midlife. Vitez, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 Inquirer series (and later book) on death and dying, returns to this subject looking into situation of an Alzheimer’s patient of age 90 and its effect on her boomer daughter, Carol Harrison, 60. After visiting her mother, who hasn’t recognized her daughter for 15 years, Harrison told Vitez, she’d like to plan for her own death, should dementia set in. She said, “I think there needs to be a whole paradigm shift, and I think my generation, the baby boomers, need to be the ones to do it.”
Vitez quotes Ruth Drew, director of Family and Information Services for the Alzheimer’s Association, who said that while her organization cannot support ending a life, “until someone has gone through it [watching a loved one decline with Alzheimer’s], they don’t know what it feels like.”
Drew told him, “When you have a disease like Alzheimer’s, where there’s no treatment and no cure, they’re going to think: ‘How do I want this to end up? What are my choices?’ This will be an ongoing discussion and debate unless and until we find effective treatments.”
*** In “Reimaging Life,” Mikael Wagner reflects poignantly on aging with HIV. His first-person commentary, which appears in the San Francisco Bay Times (March 22), describes his experience as a boomer, who was first diagnosed with the disease in 1982. Writing in the LGBT paper’s “Aging in Community” column, Wagner, recalls seeking support from his mother, normally “the last person in the world whom I would turn to for help, but she actually surprised me. She explained to me that we now had a lot in common with each other. Then, the light bulb started to glow brighter with her next words. In the sweetest voice she said, ‘All of your friends are dying and so are mine. So, let’s figure out this together and how we will survive.’ At that time, my mom was the age I am today, and full of life and encouragement for me.”
Since then, Wagner, managing director of Promotions West, a public relations and health promotions firm, writes, “Life has taught me that aging does not mean getting old and feeling depressed. Aging means using all of your insightful experience that has been acquired along the way and transforming your life into a magical experience to reach new goals or to expand your life. Reimagining life is making what could be into what is.”
Wagner, who is Africa American, adds, “I am wise enough to know that all sorts of negativity exists in society against those in the LGBT community, against communities of color and against older people in the workforce, but I refuse to be put down because of any of those negative thoughts.”
*** “Aging Latinos: Increasing Diversity Will Increase Challenges for Aging Network,” by Janice Lynch Schuster, is the latest overview of covering disparities in care developed in the “Tip Sheet” section on aging in the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) website. The “Tip Sheet” quotes leading authorities on Latino elder health, cites and links to important studies, and suggests potential stories and sources for reporters.
Schuster writes, “While Hispanics are a vital and expanding part of the U.S. population, there are troubling trends in their health and well-being. Chronic diseases – such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, asthma, obesity, hypertension, arthritis and liver disease – are prevalent and burdensome among this community. For some of these conditions, including diabetes, obesity, and HIV and AIDS.” She adds, “Latinos are twice as likely as whites to be diagnosed with diabetes, and 50 percent more likely to die from it. Their higher obesity rates – 39.1 percent versus 34.3 percent – puts them at greater risk for developing diabetes and other chronic health problems.”
*** Series on Ohio Financial Elder Abuse: Gen-beat reporter Encarnacion Pyle of the Columbus Dispatch saw her nearly 8,000-word investigation of financial elder abuse published March 15 and 16. “More Help Needed for Ohio’s Abused or Neglected Seniors” ran that Sunday with essentially a feature-length “sidebar” headlined “Greed Often at Heart of Ohio Senior-Abuse Cases.” Leading Monday’s installment was “Advocates Seek More Funds to Fight Elder Abuse” along with “Often, Elderly Abused by Relatives.” She produced the series through the Journalists in Aging Fellows program of New America Media and the Gerontological Society of America, with support from the Silver Century Foundation.
*** “Experts, Seniors Tell CA Lawmakers ‘Hear Us’ on Rising Elder Poverty,” New America Media, Paul Kleyman, (March 24). Seniors told California lawmakers, “Listen to us” at a hearing on rising poverty among elders, straining their food, income, health and housing.
*** “Many Fears Stalk the Aging As Safety Nets Shrink; Media Stereotypes Miss the Full Story,” by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet (March 19), writes, “When one surveys the landscape of fears that face aging Americans, several big takeaways emerge. First, generalizations do not apply when life in every successive decade or phase presents different challenges. Moreover, lots of what is pedaled in the media, or by fear-mongering businesses, is wrong, because the real-life experience of what often happens is different. And what really matters or scares people the most isn’t widely talked about at all—even though what’s really happening to aging loved ones sits on the tips of people’s tongues.” (GBO’s editor is cited toward the end of this essay, but I recommend it anyhow.) Rosenfeld’s keen and nuanced analysis will be excellent reading for GBONews readers, ever trying to reconcile conventional perspectives on aging with their on-the-ground reporting and experience.
*** “Technology Helps Seniors Remain at Home,” by Sally Abrahms, Kiplinger’s Retirement Report (March 2015), reports, “A variety of gadgets help the elderly keep their independence and age in place.” Noting expert projections that by 2017, the elder gizmo market will reach $30 billion, she quotes gerontologist Katy Fike, co-founder of the San Francisco-based Aging 2.0, stating, “The aging-in-place technology field is exploding.” Abrahms describes a number of available technologies and how various people are using them in their everyday lives.
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