Just The Facts, Ma'am

Ten Basic Human Needs

Here is welcome news for Americans over fifty. For decades the Cost of Living Index has been the basis for Social Security cost of living adjustments (COLA.) It has proven a poor measure of the real cost of autonomy for beneficiaries.
We've known calculations of the so-called poverty line are erroneous, just as "minimum wage," by no means, covers the minimum cost to live independently. We've known this as surely as we have known that the money we've put into Social Security retirement is our money.

This week Wider Opportunities for Women announced a new study, published in cooperation with the Gerontology Institute of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston. Sound like a group of scholars, living on the summit of Academia's Everest? Read on.

Two priorities that prompted the study are economic security for older adults, social and demographic research on aging. Meticulously researched and objective, The National Economic Security Standard Index addresses the cost of "aging in place," how our circumstances influence our needs and how where we live impacts our cost of living.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  

The daring idea, here, is to bring accuracy to the national dialogue regarding meeting fundamental human needs, particularly those of our aging population. Below are links to the Gerontology Institute, Wider Opportunities for Women and basiceconomicsecurity.org. We will discuss the findings and significance further in future posts.

http://www.wowonline.org/
http://www.umb.edu/gerontologyinstitute/
http://www.basiceconomicsecurity.org/

Be the change by being well-informed. One of my friends recently went the distance. She read a thousand pages of affordable health care legislation. She knows she'll be living the reality, with or without understanding.