Sara Luterman, The 19th

‘They’ll find a way to take it from you’: Older women lose faith in Social Security

There are few constants in American politics, but one of them has been older Americans’ faith in Social Security. That might be changing for some, including older women, according to recent focus groups hosted by AARP.

“They’ll find a way to take it from you,” Dorothy B., a 74-year-old Democrat from North Carolina, said during one of the focus group sessions, held this month as part of the organization’s ongoing research into the priorities and concerns of women 50 and older. Focus group participants are identified by their first name and last initial, according to the rules laid out by AARP.

“I think it’s definitely going to be reduced,” agreed Claudia C., a 65-year-old Democrat from Washington, who said she decided to receive her Social Security benefits earlier than she might have otherwise as a result.

“I could have waited until 70 or my full retirement age and gotten a lot more money. But I felt that I should take it now. At least I got the money now,” she said.

All eight participants in the Democratic or Democratic-leaning focus group raised their hands when asked if they were worried about the future of their Social Security benefits. But the fear and uncertainty older women in the focus groups felt transcended politics. Republican or Republican-leaning women over 65 expressed similar doubts. In a show of hands, five out of the eight women in the GOP focus group indicated they were not confident that Social Security was something they could rely on.

“They keep telling us, OK, in 2032, there’s no more money in Social Security,” said Amy M., 70, a Republican from Missouri, referring to a projected date in which some experts say President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful law” will cause sharp cuts to the program. “Congress can’t seem to get on the same page about anything,” she said, adding: “I don’t see them doing anything to shore it up and make sure that it’s there. I don’t believe we can count on it.”

Patricia H., 66, a Republican from New Jersey, noted that while she and her family are financially comfortable, she is reluctant to spend money on things like vacations, just in case.

“The way the political climate is, you just never know,” she said.

This uncertainty expressed in these focus groups represents a big departure from long-standing polling on Social Security. Confidence in the future of the program tends to be relatively steady, although the most recent polling has shown a decline. Overall, seven percentage points fewer Americans are confident in the future of Social Security compared with five years ago according to AARP’s polling on the issue.

Older people already receiving Social Security tend to have the highest confidence in the program. This was the case in a recent AARP poll marking the program’s 90th anniversary. About 65 percent of Americans over 65 said they were somewhat or very confident in Social Security’s future, compared with more pessimism from younger cohorts. About 25 percent of Americans ages 18 through 24 said they were somewhat or very confident in Social Security’s future, and only 20 percent of Americans ages 25 through 34 were somewhat or very confident.

“Once you start receiving the benefit, it really does shift perspective about how you feel about the program,” said Jenn Jones, vice president of Financial Security and Liveable Communities in Government Affairs at AARP.

Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and Disability Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan, left-leaning think tank, noted the same trend.

“Typically, as people get older, they become more confident in the future of Social Security – probably because they know more people who receive it and are close to receiving it themselves or start receiving it themselves,” she said.

Romig said she was “really surprised” by the uncertainty expressed during the focus group and suggested that perhaps this change is a result of diminished confidence in institutions in general. She pointed to a recent report from the Urban Institute indicating a spike in early claims for Social Security benefits after cuts undertaken by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

“When people saw chaos at [the Social Security Administration] in how the program was being implemented, they wanted to take the money and run,” Romig said.

The decision will have a long-term impact on the financial wellbeing of those who claimed the benefit earlier. People who claim Social Security at age 62 instead of age 67, for example, receive 30 percent less in monthly benefits for the rest of their lives.

Attitudes toward Social Security also tend to be linked to confidence in the economy at large.

“As costs have risen, you are starting to see a little bit more concern about [Social Security’s] future show up in the data from the same cohort who rely on it heavily for their financial security. With rising costs, with inflation, Social Security doesn’t go as far because things are more expensive, and so you see a lot more sort of anxiety among especially the older cohorts around sort of changes,” Jones said.

Older women are more vulnerable to these shifts because they receive lower Social Security payments, on average, than men.

“Typically, women enter their retirement years with less financial security. They’ve been able to save less. This goes back to the pay gap — Women earning around 80 cents on the dollar men get,” she said.

Another contributor? Women are more likely to be the ones who step up and take on caregiving responsibilities.

“More often than not, women are the ones who have to step away from the workforce to care for loved ones. That’s not to say that they don’t return, but in those intervening moments, they have lost both income for their day-to-day and income that would have gone to taxes for Social Security,” Jones said.

As a result, older women may feel the financial pinch and by extension, uncertainty about Social Security’s future, more than men.

So what will happen to Social Security in the next few years? Both Romig and Jones said they think it is unlikely anything will change for people already receiving their benefits.

“There’s a pretty strong bipartisan consensus that you just don’t go after people who are already receiving benefits or are close to it,” said Romig.

However, they stress that the anxiety older Americans, particularly older women feel makes sense.

“Confidence in all kinds of institutions, has been diminishing over some time, but especially this year, I think confidence in the government to deliver has really taken a huge hit,” Romig said, pointing to chaos caused by federal government layoffs and appointees who are hostile to the departments they have been tapped to lead.

This story was published in partnership with The 19th, an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics, policy and power. Read the original story here.

‘It feels like a mountain you never get done climbing’: COVID isn’t over for some

Originally published by The 19th. Subscribe to our daily newsletter.

Four years into the COVID-19 pandemic, few Americans are especially concerned about catching the disease. A recent poll from Pew found that only 20 percent of Americans consider the virus to be a major health threat. Only 10 percent are concerned about becoming very ill or hospitalized. Less than a third have received an updated COVID-19 vaccine. Pew did not ask how many people still wear masks.

But for many with disabilities and chronic illnesses, it is impossible to move on.

Although vaccination and medications like Paxlovid have helped reduce the number of deaths, disabled people and older adults are still at higher risk. Life expectancy in the United States has dropped, and COVID-19 is the third leading cause of death. Long COVID, the complex and poorly understood constellation of symptoms that linger long after an active infection ends, impacts an estimated 6.8 percent of Americans, or 17.6 million people.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 1 in 4 adults have some kind of disability. It is difficult to know what people with disabilities think about declining interest in COVID precautions as a whole, as they are not generally polled as a demographic. A 19th/SurveyMonkey poll from last year found that a third of disabled respondents also had caregiving responsibilities of their own.

The 19th spoke with four disabled Americans, most of whom have their own caregiving responsibilities for disabled family members, about their experiences four years into the pandemic. They expressed anger, frustration and a profound sense of isolation.

Sarah Anderson, 47, lives in Quincy, Illinois. She writes romance and young adult novels. Her husband is a financial analyst and their son is in his first year of college. Anderson spends much of her time doing caregiving for her mother, Caroline Lucas. Lucas, 81, lives down the street. Anderson does her mother’s grocery shopping, takes her to appointments and helps with some tasks around the house.

Lucas is a stroke survivor and has a severe immunodeficiency she receives regular infusions to treat, plus a number of other medical issues. Anderson, her husband and her mother are careful about masking and have not had COVID, to their knowledge. Her son had it recently, however.

“He’s living in a dorm with a lot of unmasked people. You can’t live 24 hours a day in a mask. We made sure he was up to date on his vaccines and bought him the best air purifier we could,” Anderson told The 19th.

When he comes home, he wears a mask, especially around his grandmother.

“They call it ‘saving Mimi’ – Mimi is what my grandkids call me,” Lucas said.

Because of the lack of precautions others take, Lucas’s world has become very small. She doesn’t go to see shows at the community theater anymore. She only sees family and goes to doctor’s appointments. Anderson and her mother have also struggled to find a home health aide willing to wear a mask while working with Lucas.

“It’s called ‘home health assistance.’ Health is the second word. We had someone who loved cats, got along with my mom fairly well and wore a mask, but she relocated and we’re not going to see her again. So we have to look for someone again. It feels like a mountain you never get done climbing,” Anderson said.

When asked how it feels that most people have stopped caring about COVID, Lucas did not mince words.

“It pisses me off. Such a terrible waste of life has gone on,” she said.

Sonja Castañeda-Cudney, 42, lives in Los Angeles. She is a doctoral student at the University of Southern California focused on mental health policy. She lives with her husband and two daughters, ages 3 and 5. She also has a stepson who lives with his mother nearby. They wear masks regularly and do not eat indoors with other people.

Castañeda-Cudney was careful about COVID from the beginning because her older daughter was born extremely premature. Her older daughter was a twin, but her twin did not survive.

“The girls were born at 26 weeks, emergency C-section. Their lungs were underdeveloped. Their hearts were underdeveloped. Eva was in the NICU for four and a half months and my daughter, Lucia, passed away after 11 days,” Castañeda-Cudney told The 19th.

Despite her efforts, Castañeda-Cudney and her immediate family members contracted COVID in August. Castañeda-Cudney has long COVID as a result, and is on a waiting list to be admitted to a long COVID clinic.

“I never really recovered. I get headaches. It’s like I’m hungover nonstop. It makes it hard to look at screens. It makes it hard to parent. It makes it hard to live a normal life,” Castañeda-Cudney said.

Castañeda-Cudney’s older daughter is in preschool and wears a mask. She says neither of her daughters has had problems tolerating masking. Her 3-year-old was born during the pandemic. “This is her life,” Castañeda-Cudney said.

They go to other children’s parties, but they wear masks and will take their cake and go eat it outside.

Castañeda-Cudney is angry that people are no longer taking precautions.

“It feels like s---. It feels like community care is not a thing. The world is so self-centered right now. If something doesn’t immediately affect you personally, then it’s not something to be concerned about,” she said. “I live with severe PTSD. I already lost a child. I’m not willing to lose another child.”

Hannah Neely, 42, lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two children, ages 10 and 12. She had cancer of the immune system, and between the disease and treatment, her immune system was severely weakened. Before, Neely was a teacher, but she is now too disabled to work. Her husband is a software engineer, although he was recently laid off.

Neely, her husband and her children wear masks. They do not socialize or eat indoors at restaurants. For a while, her children took classes online through the public school system, but eventually she sent them back to school masked.

“We go to the store, we go to doctor’s appointments, we go to our kids’ school, but that’s kind of it. And we mask everywhere,” Neely told The 19th.

In a strange way, Neely feels “lucky” to be a cancer survivor, because it means she doesn’t need to justify her concern about COVID to others. Most people she interacts with do not think she is being unreasonable.

“I am disabled in a way that is invisible, but sympathetic. I haven’t faced the medical gaslighting people with [chronic fatigue syndrome] have faced. … No medical professionals have ever told me I’m overreacting,” she said.

Some family and friends have engaged in a sort of wishful thinking.

“People sometimes say, ‘It’ll be fine. Hannah, I’m sure you’ll be fine. You can’t actually say that with any certainty,” Neely said.