KFF Health News’ “Navigating Aging” columnist, Judith Graham, spent six months this year talking to older adults who live alone by choice or by circumstance — most commonly, a spouse’s death. They shared their hopes and fears, challenges, and strategies for aging solo.
Graham moderated a live event on Dec. 11, hosted by KFF Health News and The John A. Hartford Foundation. She invited five seniors ranging in age from 71 to 102 and from across the country — from Seattle; Chicago; Asheville, North Carolina; New York City; and rural Maine — to talk candidly about the ways they are thriving at this stage of life.
More than 16 million Americans are living alone while growing old, an unprecedented number. This slice of the older population has significant health issues: Nearly 4 in 10 people age 65 or older who live alone have vision or hearing loss, difficulty caring for themselves and living independently, problems with cognition, or other disabilities. People aging alone are also at higher risk of becoming isolated, depressed, and inactive; experiencing accidents; and neglecting to care for themselves.
A person who listened to the panel conversation observed: “I am struck by the seeming absence of fear, acceptance of the hands they have been dealt, and the lack of denial about this phase of life. Minimal time spent worrying. Full lives. Mostly comfortable with living alone. THIS dispels many myths about what living alone looks like.”
Read the stories here: kffhealthnews.org/news/tag/going-it-alone/
click here for the transcript Transcript: ‘Going It Alone’ — A Conversation About Growing Old in America[Editor’s note: This transcript was generated using both transcription software and a human’s light touch. It has been edited for style and clarity.]
Judith Graham: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I’m Judy Graham, and I write the “Navigating Aging” column for Kaiser Health News, actually known as KFF Health News. I’m also the moderator for today’s event. We’re all in for treat: a conversation with five remarkable older adults about their lives and their experiences.
First, a few words of introduction. As many of you know, KFF is an independent organization that focuses on health policy research, polling, and news. It sponsors KFF Health News and partners with media organizations across the country. The Washington Post has been our partner for the series that is the subject of this webinar, “Going It Alone.” KFF Health News is committed to covering the greatest demographic trend of our time: the astonishing growth of the older population, now 60 million strong. And I’ve been privileged to be a part of that. For many years, The John A. Hartford Foundation, the co-sponsor of this event, has supported our aging coverage. I’ll let Rani Snyder, who oversees the Hartford Foundation’s grant-making to improve the care of older adults, tell you more. Rani, onto you.
Rani Snyder: Thank you so much, Judy. It’s great to be here. And thank you, especially Judy, for all of the work that you do for the “Navigating Aging” column, which is just terrific. Our foundation, The John A. Hartford Foundation, is really proud to support today’s event and KFF Health News and all that you do. I am Rani Snyder. I’m the vice president of program at The John A. Hartford Foundation. Our foundation is a nonpartisan national philanthropy with the mission to improve the care of older adults. We happen to reside in New York City, but we operate all across the country. And we work in three different areas: creating age-friendly health systems, supporting family caregivers, and improving serious illness and end-of-life care. And I really want to welcome our entire audience to today’s discussion about living alone while growing old. Our foundation invests pretty heavily in supporting family caregivers or older adults who are the backbone of care in this country.
And we also recognize, and even more so now, thanks to Judy’s excellent reporting, that millions of people don’t have a family member or a friend who are assisting them as they age and could potentially need care. So our foundation is working to make sure that all older adults, no matter where they live, no matter their background, no matter their family circumstances, have access to high-quality, age-friendly care that’s focused on what matters to all of us as we get older. So by funding programs that connect health systems, public health, and community-based services, and also by engaging when we can with policymakers and the public, our plan is to create systems of support and communities of connection that help people to age well as they’re aging alone. Speaking of aging well, right now we’re developing a new initiative to support social connection among older people, and we invite you to follow and engage with us at our website, which is johnahartford.org.
We’re really looking forward to this conversation today, actually. Our goal is not only to highlight challenges, but, honestly, to explore the resilience and the ingenuity of people who are aging solo. And that’s why I’m especially thankful to our panelists, five people who are featured in Judy’s series. We so appreciate your sharing your stories, and I would encourage everyone who is online on this webinar to engage with them and engage with Judy by asking questions and contributing to this discussion. So please carry this conversation forward to your networks and your communities. You also have the opportunity to shine a light on this topic that’s too often overlooked. So now let’s get started, and I want to hand it back to you, Judy, to introduce this fabulous panel.
Graham: Thanks so much. A little context before we get straight to it. The number of older adults living alone in the United States is truly unprecedented. In the past, there were fewer older people and they tended to live with family as they grew older. But with longer life spans, older people are outliving spouses; with increasing divorce rates, more people find themselves without partners as they age and with greater mobility. Even those with adult children find them far away and not part of their daily lives. How big is this group? We’re talking about more than 10 million older women and 6 million older men who live alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Health issues are common in this group. Nearly 4 in 10 older adults who live on their own have vision or hearing problems, difficulty living independently, problems with cognition or other disabilities. Who’s around to help them or even notice when these older adults need assistance?
As Rani said, our health care system relies on spouses, partners, and adult children to be the backbone of our system of nonmedical care for seniors. What happens when there are no family members of this kind or they live at a distance? These are among the questions I’ve explored in my series “Going It Alone,” and I focused in this series on the real experts in this topic, older adults, who know better than anybody else what they live with. Today, you’ll hear from five of the older adults who appear in my series. As you can see, they live in different parts of the country, and they face different issues. We will talk for about an hour and then spend half an hour answering your questions. Please submit those via the chat function on your screen or the Q&A function. I’ll try to get to as many as I can.
This event is being recorded and will be accessible permanently afterward on YouTube, and we’ll of course link to it on the KFF Health News website. Now on to our panelists. I’ve asked them to introduce themselves before we dive into our discussion. Let’s start with Bill Hall in Seattle.
Bill, your sound is not working. Why don’t you try again and … OK, we’re going to go on to somebody else while you work with your sound. Let’s try Don Bell in Chicago.
Donald Bell: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Chicago. My name is Donald Bell, and I am a resident of a unique senior residence, the Town Hall Apartments, which is Chicago’s first and the nation’s fourth LGBTQ+-friendly senior residence. Now, LGBTQ+-friendly does not mean LGBTQ+-exclusive. Our demographic breaks down by the following percentages: We have 30% of our neighbors are hetero-identified and 70% are LGBT-identified, but together we form one great community.
Graham: How old are you, Don? And do you live alone?
Bell: I’m 75.
Graham: OK, thank you.
Bell: Yes.
Graham: Hilda Jaffe of New York City. Why don’t you introduce yourself?
Hilda Jaffe: OK. Good morning — well, it is still morning everywhere, I guess — everyone. My name is Hilda Jaffe. I live in New York City, the crossroads of the world, and I live about one block away from Times Square, which is the crossroads of New York City. I am 102 years old, which astonishes me every day, I can tell you that. I have lived in New York City for the past 14 years. Before that, I had 60-some years in a house in New Jersey. After my husband died, I lived there for a short while and then moved into New York from an ordinary three-, four-bedroom house into a one-bedroom rental apartment in a high-rise building. I’m a widow, as I’ve mentioned. I have two children, my son in California, my daughter Tel Aviv, Israel.
I have five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren who live in California, Philadelphia, Switzerland, and Israel. I’m in a centenarian study, and that is really an important part of what goes on in my life — to be a part of about 2,500 other people who are involved in this largest centenarian study in the world run out of New England. It’s called the New England Centenarian Study. And I do puzzles. Every day I do The New York Times crossword puzzle.
Graham: In ink, if I am correct.
Jaffe: Correct.
Graham: Ken Elliott, why don’t you go next?
Ken Elliott: OK, thank ...
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