Gloria L. Gnatz, 66, was a drug-abuse counselor for a small Chicago social-service agency for 12 years until her retirement in 1990.
”I started out with a salary of $13,000 in 1978, and after 12 years I was making only $15,000,” said Gnatz, who has a bachelor`s degree in social work from the University of Oklahoma in Norman and is a registered nurse.
”But I loved that job, I really did.”
Divorced, with three grown children, Gnatz was out of the labor market for 13 years while raising her family and worked part-time after her divorce in a variety of low-paying jobs.
”And I also loved being with my children,” she said.
But the years she spent raising her family reduced her Social Security payments. Gnatz also is a ”notch baby,” the term applied to those born between 1917 and 1926 who receive lower Social Security benefits than those born earlier or later. And Gnatz never had a job that provided a pension.
Today her income is $429 a month, after Medicare deductions. Gnatz, who has a serious health condition, said her family helps her.
”I`m not so badly off as other women, but I`m poor,” Gnatz said. ”I have to make ends meet. I share a small apartment, I can`t travel and I can`t buy clothes unless they`re used.
”If I had my life to live over, knowing what`s happened to me, I`d get baby-sitters and work full time as a nurse so I could earn a pension and qualify for more Social Security. I`m telling my daughter to do that.”
Because of low wages, occupational segregation, lack of benefits and care-givingresponsibilities-factors that stall women`s career advancement and economic independence-Gnatz is one of the nation`s 2.4 million women over age 65 in poverty.
The economic predicament of low-income elderly women is expected to worsen in this decade, a negative effect of the much-talked-about demographic trend called the graying of America. The 32 million Americans ages 65 and older make up 12 percent of the population; in the next 30 years, that percentage will increase to 30 percent.
”The face of poverty by 2020 will be largely female,” the Washington-based Older Women`s League says.
The projections are troubling, and the Southport Institute for Policy Analysis, a non-profit think tank based in Washington and Southport, Conn., focuses on the problem in its Project on Women and Population Aging.
Julianne Malveaux, a San Francisco-based economist, recently completed a study for the institute titled, ”The Economic Predicament of Low-Income Elderly Women.”
According to Malveaux:
– Women make up 58 percent of people 65 and older and 71 percent of the poor in that age group.
– Only 9 percent of women over 65 are black, but black women make up 23 percent of the poor in that age group. Forty percent of Latinos over 65 are poor.
– In 1989, women over 65 had a median annual income of $7,655-just 27 percent above the poverty line.
– In 1990, 46 percent of retired men received pensions, but only 24 percent of retired women did.
Malveaux, who has a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the ”stagnant” economy will increase the number of impoverished older women.
”The core work force is shrinking, while the contingent work force-disproportionately made up of women-is growing,” Malveaux said in the report.
In addition, employment is growing rapidly in small businesses that are disproportionately female.
”These workers often receive no health insurance or retirement benefits,” said Malveaux, whose research focuses on the impact of economic policy on African-Americans, other minorities and women. ”Unionization continues to drop, further decreasing health and pension coverage. And the shift from manufacturing to service employment, where women are concentrated, has increased the number of low-wage jobs.”
She warned that even though younger women now work full time and most understand the need for pensions, future generations of older women still may be in economic peril.
”Women`s wages still are lower than men`s, they still take time out of the paid labor market to provide family care, and labor-market trends increase the likelihood that women will work part time or on a contingent basis, further lowering their retirement income,” Malveaux said.
Jessie Allen, director of the Southport Institute`s project on women and aging, said Malveaux`s study underscores the need for public policy ”raised by the intersection of the aging trend and women`s changing roles.”
Allen suggests that pension policies be revised to reflect the way women work. ”They are set up for the typical male experience,” she said. She also urges reforms in Social Security so that women who raise children are not penalized for the years they`re out of the paid-labor market. And, Allen said, a national health-care plan is needed.
”The question of elderly women in poverty has to be addressed,” said Allen. ”It cannot be ignored.”
