Having more money not only allows people to buy more things, it is correlated with living longer, according to a new report. It found that older adults with fewest financial resources die nearly a decade earlier than those with the greatest wealth.
The National Council on Aging and the LeadingAge LTSS Center at UMass Boston developed the report with nationally representative data from 20,000 people included in the Health and Retirement Study out of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Researchers found that mortality rates among older adults in the bottom 60% of wealth were nearly double those of older adults in the top 20%, with those at the bottom dying nine years earlier on average.
“It is shocking and unacceptable that in the United States in 2025, poverty steals almost a decade of older Americans’ lives,” said Ramsey Alwin, NCOA President and CEO.
Other researchers have also highlighted the impact wealth can have on expected mortality. Audacy station WBBM Newsradio in Chicago reported last summer that State of Illinois and researchers at UIC completed a study that concluded “those experiencing homelessness face much shorter life expectancy and are at greater risk of being victims of violence.”
Those findings and the new report from the National Council on Aging and the LeadingAge LTSS Center at UMass Boston come as homelessness has been on the rise in the U.S. Earlier this year, Audacy reported on research that indicated the number of Americans age 55 and older who experience homelessness will nearly triple in the next five years. Last December, we also reported that homelessness had hit record levels in the U.S., jumping more than 18% in a single year.
U.S. News & World Report recently released a list of the states with the most homeless people in the U.S. Here are the top 10:
1. California (187,084)
2. New York (158,019)
3. Washington (31,554)
4. Florida (31,362)
5. Massachusetts (29,360)
6. Texas (27,987)
7. Illinois (25,832)
8. Oregon (22,875)
9. Colorado (18,715)
10. Arizona (14,737)
As of last month, the National Alliance to End Homelessness said resources were insufficient to meet new demands for the growing homeless population. In January, the London School of Economics also noted that the U.S. “exhibits wider disparities of wealth between rich and poor than any other major developed nation.”
Wealth concentration in the U.S. previously hit a peak around a century ago, in the 1920s just before the Great Depression. It then fell significantly over the following three decades.
“But the equalizing trends of the mid-20th century have now been almost completely undone,” The London School of Economics said. “At the top of the American economic summit, the richest of the nation’s rich now hold as large a wealth share as they did in the 1920s.”
According to the National Council on Aging, the new report shows that more than 19 million older adult households do not have the income needed to cover basic living costs based on cost-of-living data from the Elder Index. That’s around 45% of those households. Additionally, 80% (about 34 million households) aren’t able to weather a major shock such as widowhood, serious illness, or the need for long-term care.
Even living independently is out of reach for most older adults, per the new report. It said that nearly 50% of adults age 60 and older had household incomes below the Elder Index value for where they lived, meaning that their income was below the standard needed to afford basic needs. That’s a 5% increase since 2020. Most households with older adults (80%, or 47 million) in the U.S. are financially struggling or at risk of falling into economic insecurity.
Looking towards the future, the National Council on Aging said that financial patterns would need to “improve dramatically in order for most older Americans to maintain economic security,” as living costs rise. Inflation, health care costs and long-term care are all factors that put added stress on the finances of older Americans.
“The future of aging in America will likely be defined by an ever-widening inequality in both financial status and mortality, deepening the divide between the majority of older Americans (the 80%) and the top 20%,” the National Council on Aging said.