CHANGE IN ELDERLY HOUSEHOLDS: RACE/ETHNIC COMPARISONS

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The primary objective of this proposal is to assess elderly living arrangements in terms of two important policy and research issues: (1) differences in elderly living arrangements among age groups (e.g., young-old versus old-old) and among three race/ethnic groups (e.g., non-Hispanic whites, blacks, and Hispanics), in the context of different patterns of aging; and (2) the balance between private and public economic resources in the support of elderly individuals, particularly as this balance results in differences by age or race/ethnicity. These issues are incorporated into a three-step analysis of elderly household composition in the contemporary United States. In the first step of the analysis, patterns of and changes in household composition among the elderly between 1960 and 1985 are analyzed, using census and survey data. The major goals of this step are (a) to provide rigorous estimates of the patterns of household composition for age and race/ethnic groups, a task that will benefit from the large samples provided in these data; and (b) to generate estimates of differences in household composition for selected birth cohorts, a task that can only be accomplished using large national data sets across an extended period of time. This step of the analysis provides insights as to the historical establishment of "social models" of household behavior in old age, models which likely vary by cohort and race/ethnicity. The second step of the analysis addresses the importance of several sets of household composition predictors (e.g., demographic characteristics, economic resources, health, and family resources), using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). This analysis is expected to benefit from the more detailed economic and health measures available in the SIPP, and to provide estimates of individual transitions in household composition. In the third step of the analysis a hazards approach to the issue of household change is implemented, with the goal of providing new information on not only the likelihoods of experiencing household change but also the timing of those changes relative to the timing of other individual changes, especially changes in economic status. In a final segment of the analysis a combination of all three steps will be focused on the analysis of the "oldest-old" portion of the elderly population, with the goal of identifying differences and similarities in determinants of household composition across the elderly age span.