Abstract
Almost half of single women over the age of 65 face the real crisis of outliving their financial resources. Most have very limited resources and are forced to make daily tradeoffs between paying bills, forgoing home maintenance or medical needs. New research shows that economic insecurity among single senior women is on the rise. Between 2004 and 2008—even before the full impact of the Great Recession had been felt—economic insecurity among this population subgroup increased by one-third, from 35 percent to 47 percent (see Figure 1).