Aging Into Poverty: The Looming Crisis for American Women

Aging In Poverty has been nominated for the Suraj Mal and Shyama Devi Book Prize 2025, hosted by IAFFE (International Association for Feminist Economics) 

 “Kathy Sharp does a really good job at blending personal stories and social service issues with the broader macro level issues of senior policy. The book left me happy it was written yet depressed about the fate of many of our senior citizens.” 

Dr. David Wagner.  Dr. Wagner is an emeritus professor at the University of Southern Maine in sociology and social work and is the author of twelve books including The Poorhouse: America’s Forgotten Institution and Poverty and Welfare in America.   

While one in five of us will need significant assistance with the activities of daily living or long-term care for more than five years, costing as much as $100,000 per year, about 50% of women ages 55 to 66 have no personal retirement savings.  Aging Into Poverty spotlights the looming crisis for American women, their families, and communities. 

Author Kathy Sharp details the history and public policy decisions that have consigned so many senior women to spend the end of their lives on waiting lists for care and dependent on public assistance.  Aging Into Poverty is a compelling personal narrative drawing from the experience of a caregiver who scrambled to put supports in place as her mother, a retired CPA, outlived her savings as her deteriorating health needs required an escalating level of care.  Sharp describes the options for senior care in the United States detailing the budget and eligibility requirements.    The system is designed so that the dependent elderly must be impoverished in order to qualify for Medicaid which is the only source of public subsidy for long term care. Many seniors do not realize that Medicare does not cover long term care. 

Sharp recognized that her mother’s experience was not unique, and that her learnings and solutions could help other dependent senior women and their caregivers generate options and secure resources.  Drawing on the work of Dr. Keren Wilson, one of the early pioneers in assisted living, Aging Into Poverty describes the framework for evaluating options for senior housing and healthcare which maximize autonomy and community.   

" Aging Into Poverty is so clearly written from the heart and lived experience. The issues are clearly laid out and the principles I developed to create a model for assisted living continue to ring true today."  

Dr. Keren Wilson is the President of the Jessie F. Richardson Foundation, a Professor at Portland State University, and the architect of the Assisted Living model.