| The Rich Eat Everyone’s Lunch

| Margaret Morganroth Gullette

| Only 10% of people ages 62 to 70 are financially able to retire and do, according to Teresa Ghilarducci’s sobering new book, Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy. Half of the rest are retired but have seen their living standards fall. Twenty-eight percent must keep working until they drop–or are dropped out. If later-life poverty comes as a surprise, it’s because old billionaires skew published data about oldwealth, falsely suggesting it is spread equally. U.S. billionaires have an average age of 67. 

The fact of the matter is, millions in their sixties and older are in deep trouble. For them, the fear of financial ruin from a chronic or final  illness is not theoretical. 

This is not an old vs young story. It is a rich-vs-everyone-else story. 

One particular cause of later-life hardship has needed more critical attention for fifty years: the business practice of getting rid of employees who are considered “too old” far too young. They get maligned as “deadwood” or “not a good fit.” They may no longer get promoted. If they lose a job it takes them far longer to find a new one. In the second half of 2025, the typical unemployed person took 10 weeks to find a job; workers 65 and older need over 30 weeks.

Your granddaughter is already cashing her paycheck while your application gets rejected over and over. Your new job is likely to pay less than your old one. The “cult of youth” is typically treated as a commercial phenomenon selling “anti-aging” products (which are, needless to say, useless against discrimination). Instead, youth-preference should be seen as a long-term capitalist trend that destroys the concept of seniority and seriously reduces the human value of growing older, at ever younger ages. As AI slides into hiring decisions in the guise of “augmented” intelligence, that tech turn will augment ageism, sexism, racism, and ableism.

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“Older worker”—the term used by economists for workers or would-be workers between the ages of 50 and (now, given longevity and neediness) age 100—does not capture this frightening midlife phenomenon and its ominous life-course consequences. Years ago I coined the term “middle ageism” to draw attention to the relatively young ages at which working people were losing jobs and even being forced to drop out of the workforce. 

Labor force participation is now at a frightening low. Midlife and older adults are encouraged—enjoined—in some cases now, required, to keep working, in order to keep benefits, but middle ageism makes that hard. And once they stop looking, they are not counted in the unemployment data. 

Such hostility to midlife and older Americans in the workforce means a vast swath can no longer do the good deeds they would prefer: financially helping their adult children or grandchildren with college or a starter home. Some cut into retirement savings to help their adult children, and open their homes again while the kids are unemployed. The American Dream fades, generation after generation. The older cohorts are idle or under-employed in the very years when their experience would benefit them and their employers. They may stop voting, or vote ignorantly, in a system that offers them few protections. 

In relation to personal retirement, victims of age bias lose the chance to save enough for later life. The Elder Index from the Gerontology Institute at UMass Boston shows that over half of older Americans struggle to make basic ends meet. Lower incomes and disappearing pensions mean many cannot match the rising costs of housing and food, added to their rising expenses for health care. Corporations dumped traditional pensions from those lucky enough to have them, in favor of minimal company contributions to 401(k)s and the like. To keep going, older adults may draw down retirement savings or take Social Security too early, losing the important growth years leading to age 70. 

Unless you get so much Social Security that you are taxed on part of it, your Social Security check is inadequate. It may not cover basic living expenses. In 2017 a woman’s check was 26% less than a man’s. In 2025, the average woman over 65 receives (after subtracting her Medicare Medical Insurance deduction) $1,426. The national average rental in 2025 is $1,632/month. 

Once pauperized, if they become ill or disabled, some people say “I would rather die than go into a nursing home,” but a million—almost 70% of them women helplessly wind up indigent in long-term care, on Medicaid. If they are not ill enough for a nursing “home,” they may be put on a long waiting list for homecare. In many states, however, homecare has been cut, along with adult day care, because of Trump’s big ugly bill, which has cut subsidies for state programs. 

It is no wonder that “retirement” has become a dirty word in the American lexicon. It’s not because of physical problems alone that people nowadays say, “old age is not for sissies.” Among those over 65, only the “unretired” have a claim on dignity. 

Robert Frost warned us in the midst of the 1930s’ Depression about what to do to prepare for a tough old age: “Provide, provide,” with “boughten friendship at your side.”  

As for giving assets away to adult children before you know if you have enough to get help through your last illness, ask King Lear how well that worked out for him. 

Margaret Morganroth Gullette is the author of American Eldercide and five other books. Since 1995, Gullette has followed trends in middle ageism in several of her own books, and in articles in Monthly Review, the Nation, New Political Science, Boston Globe, Al Jazeera, atlantic.com, and others.