GSA Journalist in Aging Article in The Crisis Magazine: Aging While Black
The Crisis Magazine has published an article authored by GSA Journalist in Aging fellow Rodney A. Brooks titled, "Aging While Black: The Crisis Among Black Americans as They Grow Old."
"After a lifetime of racial and health inequities, Black seniors are at risk of spending their last years with declining health, little income and virtually no savings...A recent 2016 CIGNA Health Disparities report found:
- Black Americans are 80 percent more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than whites, and nearly twice as likely to be hospitalized.
- Blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to suffer from Alzheimer’s and other kinds of dementia."
"Black women, said Tyson Brown, associate professor of sociology at Duke University, suffer from some of the highest levels of diabetes, hypertension, and other disabilities. Their health problems limit their ability to continue working. But many Black women have to continue working because of declining income as they age. 'And so, it's sort of a Catch-22,' said Brown." The author details why Black Americans have worse health and lower income than their white counterparts, leading to health and wealth issues.
"But overall, African Americans have endured generations of economic racism. This racism has resulted in low wages, low home ownership and little-to-no savings or investments for Black men and women. The impact of these economic inequities has reverberated into multiple generations of poverty." The author talks about wages, savings, retirement, chronic diseases, caregiving and systemic racism. “'There's an explosive increase in the wealth gap, and it continues progressively as people age.' William A. Darity, Jr." The article notes that additionally, both the economic and health issues have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
To read the article, click here.
The John A. Hartford Foundation is a co-sponsor of GSA's Journalists in Aging Fellows Program.
To learn more about the Journalists in Aging Fellowship, click here.
