What Is the Poverty Rate among the Older Adult Population in the United States - Research Proposal Example

Research Proposal What is the poverty rate among the older adult population in the United s? Abstract This research proposal is developed for the studying the impact of recession on the elderly population of the United States. This elderly population living below the poverty line face various challenges in dealing with their daily expenses and needs, medical needs, administrative costs and various others. The challenges increase with the increase in the age. There are some studies that indicate the poverty is higher in the older section of the elderly population. This paper provides the research background, theoretical framework, research questions, research methodology, research design, analysis and discussion, timeline and budget of the research. Table of Contents Abstract I. Research Background II. Theoretical Framework III. Research Methodology IV. Research Design and methods V. Analysis and Discussion VI. Timeline VII. Budget and resources VIII. Bibliography I. Research Background The population of elderly people is includes all the individuals who have reached the age of 65 years or over the age of 65 years. This population is 36,790 that is 12.3 % of the total population out of which 15,762 are male (10.7%) and 21,028 (13.8%) are female. Majority of these people spend their entire life for the welfare of their families and communities and many of them have not had secured their old age requirements or welfares. They depend on the governmental supports and welfare agencies for managing their requirement. However the budget allocation for the elder support depends on number of factors and often blamed that it is not sufficient. The non profit and non governmental organisations working in this area depends on the funds contributed by the individuals and corporations. The changing economic conditions affect the funding and resource allocations for the welfare services. The contribution of the individuals, corporations and tax payers affects adversely in the adverse economic situations like recession, economic slow down, economic impacts of war and many other. In such scenario, the question is raised about the economic impact of recession on the older population of the United States. This population is particularly concerned about the basic requirements for living and health services. The cost of living is increasing and the cost of medical services, medicines and related bills are also increasing. The older and elderly population in the US is growing and so is the problems related to the welfare and well being of this population. The economic implications for the recession have been widespread across all age group and population segment. Therefore the need is there to analyse the economic implications of recession among the old age group and elderly population segment. II. Theoretical Framework There have been tremendous studies and researches conducted in the past to study various economic aspects of the old age group and elderly people. The study ranges from the household income, contribution of the individuals in the family, gender aspects of the older population and its relationship with economic aspects of the society (Johnson and Smeeding 2000; Engelhardt and Jonathan, 2004; Johnson and Smeeding, 2004; Cherchye, De Rock and Vermeulen 2008). This study will be an integrated approach where the model of Collective Consumption, economies of scale, economic recession and consumption pattern will be studied to understand the relationship of economic recession and its impact on the poverty of elderly people. ‘The Collective Consumption Model of Browning, Chiappori and Lewbel (2006)’ is a model where individual preferences and indifference scales are considered for the study. The economies of scale of the elderly people for the household expenditure with relationship to their source of income and consumption patterns will be studied. III. Research Methodology The research methodology is a process of indentifying the most appropriate method suitable for the research and that will help in meeting the research objectives (Cresswell, 2003). “Qualitative research is an inquiry into the personal world of others that, if one is fortunate, becomes a journey into oneself. Qualitative inquiry offers opportunities for the researcher to inquire into oneself while inquiring into the other. (Sears 1992, p. 147)” The topic of the research is as follows: “What is the poverty rate among the older adult population in the United States?” Research Questions Has the recession caused an increase in the number of older adults living in poverty? How recession has impacted consumption patterns of elderly population in USA? Identify various factors affecting the prices of the commodities used by the elderly people during recession. How recession has affected the medical and health services by the elderly people? What kind of experience and expectation people have with the Government to help them dealing with the economic recession kind of situations? All these questions are aimed at understanding the economic impact of recession on the elderly poverty in the USA. The research questions of the study needs to utilise various sources of information like primary and secondary sources of information. IV. Research Design and methods This primary data will be collected with the help of structured questionnaire. This structured questionnaire will consist of set of close ended questions. These questions will cover different aspects of the economic recession, poverty and elderly population. “A quantitative approach is one in which the investigator primarily uses post positivist claims for developing knowledge (i.e. cause and effect thinking, reduction to specific variables and hypotheses and questions, use of measurement and observation, and the test of theories). (Creswell, 2003, p.19) The secondary information regarding the price, inflation, cost of commodities and other recession and census related information will be collected from various academic and official sources and will be collected and analysed. These data will be qualitative data from the secondary sources. “Qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomenon in terms of the meanings people bring to them.”(Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p.3) V. Analysis and Discussion The primary data will be analysed using statistical tools like MS Excel or SPSS to establish the correlation and conduct the time series analysis of the data. The secondary data will be analysed based on the academic models, guidance available from the professionals and academicians and judgemental ability of the researcher. VI. Timeline, Budget and resources Research Activities and Schedule S.N. Activity Lead Time 1 Problem Identification, selection of research and sampling methods 2 Weeks 2 Questionnaire Preparation and Preparing pilot study 1 Week 3 Pilot study 1 Week 4 Survey 2 Weeks 5 Secondary Research 4 Weeks 6 Preparation of Tables and Charts 2 Weeks 7 Analysis 2 Weeks 8 Preparing research report 2 Weeks Gantt chart Task/weeks 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Problem Identification, identification of research methods and sampling                               Questionnaire Preparation and Preparing pilot study                               Pilot study                               Survey                               Secondary Research                               Preparation of Tables and Charts                               Analysis                               Preparing research report                               Activities and resource Requirements Activities* Duration Start Date End Date Human Resource Place Equipment Cost / Dollar 1 2 Weeks Myself Home Stationary   2 1 Week Myself Home Stationary   3 1 Week Myself, friends Home     4 2 Weeks Myself contacted respondents Home Telephone/ Computer/Internet 200 5 4 Weeks Myself Home Computer/Internet 50 6 2 Weeks Myself Home Stationary 200 7 2 Weeks Myself Home Computer/Internet/Libraries 200 8 2 Weeks Myself Home Computer   Total   15 weeks       650 VII. Bibliography Literature Review According to Hurd (1990) the impact of poverty gets intensified with the increasing age of the individual. The reasons of the same are that the elder population has “fewer possibilities to recover from a drop in income” and has to face more challenges to enter to the labour market. Employers prefer the younger people for the job due to the prejudices like they are more likely to learn new things as fast as younger people do. There have been many studies where various factors of poverty and related issues of elderly population are covered. The highest number of the studies has been conducted in order to study the use of income, expenditure data and levels to understand the poverty aspects. There are various types of household income like families with elderly people and spouse. The household income of the spouse helps in maintaining the level of facilities in the household and allows individuals to run the house. However in the case of different types of household like low income household and high income household the impact of earning and loss of spouse or a member will be different (Cherchye, De Rock and Vermeulen, 2008). The needs and importance of the economies of scale also varies in the households. Cherchye, De Rock and Vermeulen (2008) have identified commodity bundle important to the elderly people like food items, vices, and housing, clothing, transport, energy and health services. Food items include the daily food items, dairy products and include non-alcoholic beverages. Vices include alcoholic drinks and tobacco. Housing includes the rent for the houses in the case of people living in rent, the maintenance charges for the home owners and the operating expenses of the houses. The clothing factors include the seasonal clothing including footwear. The transportation expenses are the expenses excluding the cost of the purchase of vehicles. The energy expenses are the heating and electricity expenses. The percent of the elderly population has gone down significantly from the nearly 27% of 1959 to 9.8% of total population. There has been lots of variation with in the percentage of the elderly population. The decline of the percentage was high 1959 to 1973 than the decline was with lesser rate from 1973 to 2003. Source: CBPP analysis of Census Bureau data. Besharov and Green (2004) state that “After adjusting for household income, 4,950,000 people were reclassified as non-poor, consisting of 1,126,000 children under 18 years old, 1,715,000 people between 18 and 25 years old, 1,962,000 people between 25 and 64 years old, and 148,000 people 65 years old and over.” The usage of household income varies according to the poverty status. The income sharing with the member allows having more facilities to share in the low income groups. Engelhardt and Jonathan (2004) have studied the poverty within the elder group and stated that the 65-69 years of the olds had the poverty rate of 7.5 percent whereas the households with the elders with 80 and above age the rate of poverty is as high 13%. The income distribution by this level changes significantly. This also increases various kinds of security risks to the elders like safety and security risks, risk of sexual abuse and negligence. There was significant decline on the elderly poverty during 1960s. One of the most important reasons to this was the rising Social Security for the elders. However the lack of assessment of the effectiveness of the Social Security program afterwards created a gap of finding out the effectiveness of the Social Security for the elders. (Engelhardt and Jonathan, 2004) The Americans living in the deep poverty is significant and was half the number of the people living below the poverty line. In the year 1994 5.7% of Americans were living below the poverty line totalling to 17.1 million. The half of the poverty line for the people living in deep poverty was $8,582 for a family of three members in the year 2008. The same was $11,013 for a family of four. The SSI benefit for an individual living below the poverty line was $674.00 for an individual. According to the report of National Coalition for the Homeless (2009) is three to five years for the affordable senior housing (National Coalition for the Homeless, September 2009). The income is not sufficient for meeting the basic needs like food, medicine, and health care. The lower is the position on the economic ladder; the higher will be the vulnerability of the individual to meet his/her basic requirements. The homelessness increases the vulnerability. The housing needs of elderly population are increasing. The number of elders is high who were homeless and were living alone before being homeless (Crane, 2004 as cited in National Coalition for the Homeless, September 2009). The elderly homeless people are very vulnerable and they have the feeling of distrust towards the crowd and people and at the shelters and clinics. The accessibility of the shelter houses is other complex issue as some places these are located at top floors where elderly as well as their guests find it inconvenient. The elderly population is vulnerable and susceptible to victimization. There have been complaints of being ignored by the law enforcement agencies. “In 2006, 27% of the homeless victims of violent crimes were between 50-59 years of age. Individuals 62 and older constituted only 2% of the country’s sheltered homeless population from February to April 2005, compared with 15% of the housed population.” National Coalition for the Homeless, September 2009) There are number of programs which have been successful to a certain extent in the areas like Supplemental Security Income, Social Security, Medicare, and senior housing. The extended period of the homelessness increases the bodily harms and extremely poor health conditions. The homeless elders usually suffer from the problems like depression or dementia (National Coalition for the Homeless, September 2009). Smeeding and Sandstorm (2004) have studied the most current Social Security reform proposals of the United States and other nations and found out that these proposals are not well attuned to meet the needs of the most vulnerable elders particularly to those with the age of 75 or over. The vulnerability is also high to the women of the elder group. The redistribution of the income for the retired has been lesser than the requirement. The administrative costs, value and variation of the returns of the savings of the income of elderly people is also an issue of concerns for them. The retirement savings are not sufficient due to increasing cost of living and lowering value of money. Smeeding and Sandstorm (2004) have compared the proposals of different nations and found that the three types of income maintenance programs are universal pension groups like citizenship retirement, social insurance like social retirement and social assistances like social retirement. “The first strategy usually consists of a universal (or nearly universal), pay-as-you- go, flat-rate benefit, sometimes phased out for those with higher incomes. The second strategy, social insurance, generally ties benefits more closely to earnings histories, although many social insurance pension systems also provide a modicum of benefit adequacy to all of their participants by filtering benefits toward those with lower lifetime earnings histories.” (Smeeding and Sandstorm, 2004) Cherchye, De Rock and Vermeulen (2008) have focused on studying the well being and poverty of elderly within the household based on the collective consumption model of Browning, Chiappori and Lewbel (2006). This study took account of individual preferences, indifference scales and not the criticisms on traditional equivalent scales. The consumption technology that involves the economies of scale of living in a couple or sharing dominates the intra-household expenditure. The study demonstrated various situations and identified various individual preferences, consumption technology and rule for sharing. The results of the study indicates the economic impact of the death of spouse among the elderly couples lead to substantial drop on the material well being of the elderly individual. The economic impact differs on each of the gender and economic condition of couple. The men living in the low expenditure couple live better off than the women living as a single individual whereas for the high income couples the sharing rule is favourable to the women than that of men. The literature review indicates that there is a gap of the research studies conducted for understanding the impact of economic turbulence on the level of the poverty among the elder groups. The gap also exists in understanding the factors of elders’ life like basic needs, individual preferences and impact of economic turbulence on these factors. The economic changes in the market place affect the rates of commodities and services needed by these elders. Therefore there is a need to study impact of the economic recession on the poverty level of the elders and the factors affecting their facilities and life. Reference: Bosworth, B P, Bryant, R C and Burtless G (2004) THE IMPACT OF AGING ON FINANCIAL MARKETS AND THE ECONOMY: A SURVEY http://crr.bc.edu/working_papers/the_impact_of_aging_on_financial_markets_and_the_economy_a_survey_4.html Cherchye L, De Rock, B and Vermeulen F (2008) Economic Well-Being and Poverty among the Elderly: An Analysis Based on a Collective Consumption Model, Discussion Paper No. 3349, February 2008, Germanyhttp://arno.uvt.nl/show.cgi?fid=70764 Hurd, M. (1990), Research on the elderly: economic status, retirement, and consumption and saving, Journal of Economic Literature, 28, 565-63 Johnson, D. and T. Smeeding (2000), “Who are the poor elderly? An examination using alternative poverty measures”, Center for Retirement Research Working Paper, 2000-14, Boston College. Johnson, D. and T. Smeeding (2004), POVERTY AND INCOME MAINTENANCE IN OLD AGE: A CROSS-NATIONAL VIEW OF LOW INCOME OLDER WOMEN http://crr.bc.edu/images/stories/Working_Papers/wp_2004-29.pdf Engelhardt, G V and G Jonathan (2004) SOCIAL SECURITY AND THE EVOLUTION OF ELDERLY POVERTY, Working Paper 10466 retrieved on 2 November 2009 from http://www.nber.org/papers/w10466 Slesnick, D. (1993), Gaining ground: poverty in the postwar United States”, Journal of Political Economy, 101, 1-38. National Coalition for the Homeless (September 2009) Homelessness Among Elderly Persons,. National Coalition for the Homeless, 2201 P Street, NW retrieved on 2 November 2009 from http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/Elderly.pdf Smeeding, T M and S Sandstrom (2004) POVERTY AND INCOME MAINTENANCE IN OLD AGE: A CROSS-NATIONAL VIEW OF LOW INCOME OLDER WOMEN, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College retrieved on 2 November 2009 from http://crr.bc.edu/images/stories/Working_Papers/wp_2004-29.pdf Besharov, D and Green, D (2004) MEMORANDUM on “Reconsidering the Federal Poverty Measure” retrieved on 2 November 2009 from http://www.welfareacademy.org/pubs/poverty/PovertyMeasureSeminar.Summary.Session3.pdf Creswell, J.W. (2003). Research design. Qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y. (2000). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N.K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.),Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp.1-17). 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