Much is being made of the near-retirement of the baby-boom generation. Throughout 2006, we looked at many proposals to fix Social Security without pushing more vulnerable beneficiaries into poverty. Options include a minimum benefit, increases in the normal retirement age, formula changes, progressive price indexing, caregiver credits, and restructured spousal and survival benefits.

Photo: William Boney

Our models can also project the baby boomers' long-term care needs—once they are in or beyond their late 70s. Those with high-earning adult children will most likely receive less unpaid care from their offspring. The upshot? The demand for paid services will increase in the future.

"When the Nest Egg Cracks," released early in 2006, described what could go wrong at older ages to erode carefully laid retirement finances. About 7 in 10 Americans in their 50s and 60s develop health problems and disabilities, lose their jobs, or lose spouses to death or divorce over a 10-year period. The findings highlight the safety net's limitations when things go wrong in late midlife.

Ten years after landmark welfare reform, policymakers remain concerned about the well-being of families who have left welfare as well as those still on. We reviewed and synthesized the most up-to-date research in 2006 about the composition of the welfare caseload and the status of those who left—and how this has changed over time.

Our work in 2006 also examined trends in child poverty over the past two decades and showed the importance of the strong economy in the late 1990s for lifting black children out of poverty.

Poverty research also extended to different ways the safety net provides food assistance-important since a cash-strapped family may forgo meals in tough times. For instance, more than half a million low-income Americans—mostly elderly persons—received food packages each month from the Commodity Supplemental Food Program.

Understanding health and disability is crucial to policy development. Our guide to disability statistics from the National Health Interview Survey helped define the population and the services provided.

Center Staff
Center Publications