ABSTRACT
Gender and minority status are crucial in explaining differences in the economic and health issues confronted by the aged. Significantly, the situation of older women is a result of old age, but of lifelong patterns of socioeconomic and gender stratification in the larger society. A key element of women’s precarious economic status in old age is their family responsibility across the lifespan for which they bear a significant and continuous burden of work. The availability of adult children, particularly daughters, to give care is the significant factor in keeping the frail and disabled elderly out of residential care. Older women’s low income status reflects the culmination of a lifetime of secondary economic status. Contemporary wage and social policies are still based on the underlying assumption that women are economically dependent on a wage-earning male head-of-household, who theoretically shares with his wife and other dependents his higher earnings, retirement pension, and other employment-related benefits.
