Generational equity: issues of gender and race

Recent attempts to portray the relative affluence of the current generation of older Americans as causing economic hardship for younger generations are examined in this paper. This argument, commonly referred to as the "generational equity" thesis, ignores the basic issues of gender and race. We argue that: the elderly are more sharply stratified into rich and poor than younger groups, the official poverty level used by the federal government underestimates the number of poor older persons living in poverty, and that older women and minorities have disturbingly high rates of poverty. Reducing current federal benefit levels to the elderly would do little to alleviate the problems experienced by younger generations, and would cause severe hardship for many older people. Women and minorities would be especially hard hit by such reductions since they are more likely to be poor than white males.