Changing criteria in old-age programs: the introduction of economic status and need for services

For more than a decade, incremental changes have gradually eroded the traditional approach in many policies that have relied primarily on specific old-age categories to determine eligibility for public benefits and the amount of those benefits. These changes, and other recent policy proposals, have introduced need-based criteria as well as the principle of asking wealthier older persons to pay greater taxes or share more heavily in financing services and benefits than those older people who have less income and accumulated wealth. This discussion of such modifications in policies on aging begins with a depiction of the political context in which they have emerged. It then reviews the emergence of the new approaches, and concludes with commentary on the political viability of these and other possible changes in the mixture of criteria used in old-age benefit programs.