Telling the story of the ethnic elderly: poor and alone
The struggle is almost gone from them. They worked. They saved. They did the best they could. But now the days are tough days.
These are the ethnic elderly who are just getting by, who are alone, and who fear their tomorrows.
This too is a story that we need to tell about the immigrant and minority elderly: the story of those elderly who are alone and struggling.
Here, for example, is some recent research on Latino boomers and elderly from the Center for Policy Research on Aging at UCLA.
“Many aging Latinos have minimal
pension and health care benefits or
no benefits at all, a result of their
unmet needs in regard to education:
in 2006, for example, only 59 percent
of Latinos over age twenty-five had
obtained a high school diploma,
compared to 90 percent of non-
Latino whites (Gassoumis, Wilber,
and Torres-Gil 2008). In California,
Latino elders who lived alone or with
only a spouse had the highest rates
of economic insecurity among all
elders age sixty-five and older. About
three-fourths of Latino elders who
lived alone and almost half of those
who lived with only a spouse could
not cover their basic costs of living.”
These are some of the issues we will be dealing with at our news briefing for the ethnic news media from 10 am to noon Tuesday, Feb. 23, 
at Age Options in Oak Park. We will talk about sources, contacts, new ways of reporting. I hope you can join us there.
Steve
, steve@newstips.org
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