The Elderly Population & Entitlement Benefits
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The elderly population in the United States is growing in number as people live longer and as the baby-boom generation reaches old age, and yet this older generation may have a more precarious existence than has been true in recent decades for that population. There has been much rightful concern about the elderly in America in an era in which the extended family no longer holds sway so that the elderly are more often completely on their own. Another concern has been related to the so-called entitlements in the federal budget--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare--and the impact a reduction, either by design or because the system is not secure, will have on the elderly. A recent article on the subject of how the younger generations are not preparing for old age shows how much of a problem this can be and how a new attitude is required to create a more secure future. Richman (1995) describes an economic problem in the making, a problem related to a coming demographic shift, to the economic habits of a generation, and to the political realities of the current political environment and the likely outcome of the political battles now taking place. Those Americans presently in or approaching their 30s and 40s are part of the group known as the baby-boomers, a name given to those born in the years immediately after World War II as the population increased with the return of servicemen from the war. The result was deemed a baby-boom, a bumper crop of new American
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Medicare actually discourage saving and make people more dependent on the programs. Clearly the fact that these programs may be failing constitutes a major concern for those relying so heavily upon them.
Concerns about the Social Security system have been growing in recent years with the perception that the system may be failing so that when the currently younger generations get older, the system will not have money for their old age but will be bankrupt. The danger is evident first in the size of the entitlement system:
Entitlement payments on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare now exceed all other domestic spending. Entitlements are growing faster than any other part of the federal government budget. In the past two decades, real spending on entitlements (adjusted for inflation) grew between 6 and 7 percent a year, while the economy grew by less than 3 percent per year. Social Security payments are growing in real terms at about 6 percent a year, but Medicare and Medicaid are growing at double-digit rates (Miller, 1994, 280-281).
As Richman (1995) finds, the problem is increasing as the size of subsequent generations increases, and this means that while the current generation of near-retirees is likely to be able
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Approximate Word count = 1620
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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