A study has found that nearly one-half million seniors living alone lack enough money to pay for basic living expenses in California.
The policy brief by the UCLA center for Health Policy Research and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development suggests a single senior needs $20,000 a year to survive.
The percentage grows among Latino elders; about three-fourths of them cannot cover their basic costs of living. Almost half of those who lived with only a spouse could not cover their basic costs of living.
And women may live longer, but that's a mixed blessing, according to the study.
"Older women accounted for 72 percent of all older Californians who lived alone. Those women were more likely than older men to be unable to cover their basic needs (53.5 percent of women, compared with 44 percent of men)."
