RESUMO
This article examines trends in poverty among the elderly in the United States from two perspectives. "First, we are interested in changes that took place in the magnitude, characteristics and incidence of poverty within this sector, as a result of the functioning of the economy as well as the poverty programme during the past decade. Our second primary objective is to present analytical models of the severity of poverty and use these models to describe techniques that might be employed in evaluating ways of alleviating poverty in one category of the aged poor where it seems most acute and most intractable, i.e. aged women living alone."
Assuntos
Idoso , Economia , Características da Família , Pobreza , Seguridade Social , Adulto , Fatores Etários , América , Demografia , Países Desenvolvidos , América do Norte , População , Características da População , Fatores Socioeconômicos , Estados UnidosRESUMO
PIP: This paper uses the life cycle hypothesis to explain why personal savings in the U.S. have fallen to a low of 1.9% of disposable income in 1985, despite tax cuts. Life cycle theory envisions an individual's lifetime as a series of choices of current consumption and allocation of net worth between alternative assets and liabilities so as to maximize the expected utility of consumption over life. The mathematical expression for the utility function implies the stochastic nature of future return on aessts and independence at any given age of the ratio of consumption to resources to total resources. Population growth leads to positive saving overall by increasing the ratio of younger households. The proportion of younger households (ages 25-44) in the U.S. population increased by 10.3 million from 1980-1985, and this growth is expected to continue. Older households increased their savings, but younger families are borrowing more and spending the money their elders saved.^ieng
