Attention to Political News

Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

There are wide differences in the amount of attention paid to national political news by age and educational attainment. In the current survey, 51% of U.S. adults aged 65 and older say they follow political news very closely, as do 40% of those between the ages of 50 and 64. Far fewer 30- to 49-year-olds (26%), and especially 18- to 29-year-olds (9%), are following politics very closely.

More than four in 10 college graduates (including those with and without a postgraduate education) follow political news very closely, while fewer than three in 10 adults without a college degree do.

There are modest gender differences in attention to politics, with more men (35%) than women (30%) following politics very closely. Republicans and Democrats pay similar levels of attention, but independents pay less than either of the two major party groups.

These subgroup differences are similar to what Gallup has observed since 2001, although the levels of attention measured in the 2023 poll are lower than usual for postgraduates and young adults and higher for senior citizens. Postgraduates typically pay the closest attention to politics, with an average of 51% doing so since 2001.

Gerontocracy

April Rubin at Axios:

American leadership is getting older.

Why it matters: With baby boomers making up half of Congress, the conversation on aging and health in public office from the Capitol to the White House isn't going away.The 118th Congress is one of the oldest in U.S. history — and drives debates about fitness for office, term limits and ageism.

The big picture: Top House Democrats stepped aside late last year to make room for a younger generation of leaders — a shift that's been less apparent in the Senate, particularly among Republicans.Those Democrats, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "made way for a younger generation of leadership," John Mark Hansen, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, told Axios. "And that's pretty unusual and pretty striking."

...

By the numbers: The average age of members of Congress is 58 years old.

Changing Demographics

 From the Census:

JUNE 22, 2023 — The nation’s median age increased by 0.2 years to 38.9 years between 2021 and 2022, according to Vintage 2022 Population Estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Median age is the age at which half of the population is older and half of the population is younger.

“As the nation’s median age creeps closer to 40, you can really see how the aging of baby boomers, and now their children — sometimes called echo boomers — is impacting the median age. The eldest of the echo boomers have started to reach or exceed the nation’s median age of 38.9,” said Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division. "While natural change nationally has been positive, as there have been more births than deaths, birth rates have gradually declined over the past two decades. Without a rapidly growing young population, the U.S. median age will likely continue its slow but steady rise.”

A third (17) of the states in the country had a median age above 40.0 in 2022, led by Maine with the highest at 44.8, and New Hampshire at 43.3. Utah (31.9), the District of Columbia (34.8), and Texas (35.5) had the lowest median ages in the nation. Hawaii had the largest increase in median age among states, up 0.4 years to 40.7.

...

National Pride 2023

 Megan Brenan at Gallup::

At 39%, the share of U.S. adults who are “extremely proud” to be American is essentially unchanged from last year’s 38% record low. The combined 67% of Americans who are now extremely or “very proud” (28%) also aligns with the historically subdued 65% reading one year ago.

Another 22% of U.S. adults currently say they are “moderately proud,” while 7% are “only a little” and 4% “not at all.”

...
Party identification remains the greatest demographic differentiator in expressions of national pride, and Republicans have been consistently more likely than Democrats and independents to express pride in being American throughout the trend. That gap has been particularly pronounced since 2018, with more than twice as many Republicans as Democrats saying they are extremely proud. Republicans are also nearly twice as likely as independents to express the highest degree of pride.

The latest findings, from a June 1-22 Gallup poll, show 60% of Republicans and 29% of Democrats expressing extreme pride in being American. Both figures are statistically similar to last year’s readings. Independents’ current 33% extreme pride is also essentially unchanged, but it is their lowest on record by one percentage point.

...

In addition to party identification, age appears to significantly affect Americans’ national pride. Whereas 50% of U.S. adults aged 55 and older say they are extremely proud to be American, 40% of those aged 35 to 54 and 18% of 18- to 34-year-olds say the same.

Aggregated data from 2020 to 2023 provide a sufficient sample for analysis and show that younger adults in all party groups are significantly less proud than older adults of the same political persuasion.

Attention and Credulity

 Natalie Jackson at National Journal:

At best, only one third of Americans pay close attention to politics. In a recent Marquette Law School poll, just 36 percent of respondents said they follow politics most of the time. Using different wording, a Grinnell College-Selzer poll from March found that 28 percent of Americans say they pay a lot of attention to political news.

...

When it comes to paying attention to presidential campaigns, there is even more reason to think we dramatically overestimate how invested people are. Pew Research has asked respondents how much thought they have given to the candidates running for president in the lead-up to the last several presidential elections. In the summer of 2019, barely a quarter had given the candidates much thought. The figures were similar in mid-2015. (Pew has not yet asked the question for the 2024 cycle.)

The poll also found that older people are more likely to say that they follow politics "most of the time" 

• 18-29  36%
• 30-44  43%
• 45-59  63%
• 60+    74%

And so they tend to have more contextual knowledge, which helps them sort fake headlines from true ones.

 Sawdah Bhaimiya at Business Insider:

Boomers have always taken the flack for falling for fake news stories, but a survey has found it's younger generations that are more susceptible to online misinformation.

The survey of 1,516 US adults, published Thursday, was conducted by polling organization YouGov in April 2023. It examined how likely people were to be fooled by fake headlines. The survey is based on a framework called The Misinformation Susceptibility Test, developed by University of Cambridge psychologists.

The 2-minute test, now available to the public, required participants to look at 20 headlines and determine which were fake and real. It found that, on average, 65% of those surveyed were able to correctly classify them.

Surprisingly, the survey found that younger respondents were not as adept at spotting the difference between real and fake headlines as their older counterparts who have often been memed for their online naivete.

Census: Aging America

 From the Census Bureau:

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2020 Census Demographic Profile and Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (DHC). These products provide the next round of data available from the 2020 Census, adding more detail to the population counts and basic demographic and housing statistics previously released for the purposes of congressional apportionment and legislative redistricting.

... 

• The 2020 Census shows the following about the nation’s age and sex composition: Between 2010 and 2020, median age in the U.S. grew older due to an increase in the older population.In 2020, there were 55.8 million people age 65 and over in the United States (16.8% of the total population), up 38.6% from 40.3 million in 2010. This growth primarily reflected the aging baby boom cohort.
• Centenarians grew 50% since 2010, the fastest recent census-to-census percent change for that age group

...

• In 1970, after all the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) had been born, half of the population was younger than 28.1 years old. By 2020, the median age was 38.8, an increase of more than 10 years over the past five decades.In 2020, the population age 45 and over accounted for 42% of the total population, up from 27% in 1940, the census before the Baby Boom began.
• The share of the population age 65 and over more than doubled between 1940 and 2020, from less than 7% to nearly 17%.
• In 2020, there were over 73.1 million children under age 18 (22.1% of the total U.S. population), down 1.4% from 74.2 million in 2010. The biggest decline was among the under-5 age group, whose share of the population dropped by 8.9% or 1.8 million. This finding is consistent with the decline in the total number of births and the birth rate for the United States since 2015.
• Among the states in 2020:Fourteen states had a median age over 40, twice as many as in 2010. Twenty-five states had higher shares of population age 65 and older than Florida had in 2010 (17.3%), when it had the highest share of any state. In 2020, Maine had the highest share at 21.8%, followed by Florida (21.2%) and Vermont (20.6%).
• Utah and Maine were the youngest and oldest states (as they were in 2010). Nearly half of Utah’s population was under age 31 while more than half of Maine’s population was over age 45.

...

The public can explore these age and sex statistics in two data visualizations:
Exploring Age Groups in the 2020 Census. This interactive map shows certain measures — percent of population, percent change from 2010, percent female and racial and ethnic diversity index and prevalence — for a variety of age groups for the nation, states, counties and census tracts. The visualization also provides ranking lists of the measures.
How Has Our Nation's Population Changed? This interactive visualization shows population pyramids and ranked age and sex measures for the total population, as well as race and Hispanic origin groups, for the nation, states, metropolitan areas, micropolitan areas and counties in 2020, 2010 and 2000.

A series of downloadable ranking tables related to each visualization is also available.

More information about age and sex is also available in the America Counts stories: An Aging U.S. Population With Fewer Children in 2020 and 2020 Census: 1 in 6 People in the United States Were 65 and Over, and two briefs: Age and Sex Composition: 2020 and The Older Population: 2020.

Social Security and Inequality

Gopi Shah Goda and Andrew Biggs at AEI:

Abstract:

• Almost one in every five Americans receives income support from Social Security.
• Social Security is financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, which means that today’s workers’ payroll taxes are used to pay benefits to today’s beneficiaries. 
• Changes in population demographics, including longevity improvements, have resulted in a sharp decline in the number of workers per beneficiary, and this trend is projected to continue. 
• As a result, Social Security is facing significant financial challenges and policymakers must take action to ensure its long-term sustainability

From the article:

In 2015, Social Security represented 30 percent of income on average for individuals age 65 and over. Forty percent of all seniors in 2015 received 50 percent or more of their income from Social Security. Meanwhile, 14 percent of all seniors received 90 percent or more of their incomes from the program.1 Social Security is a critical source of income for those who are widowed and low-income retirees, and Social Security represents a larger share of retirement income for women than for men. Inequality in life expectancy has significant implications for the distributional consequences of Social Security. Lower-income individuals tend to have lower life expectancies than higher-income individuals, meaning that they may receive fewer years of Social Security benefits. This means that the increasing gap in life expectancy by income works against the progressivity in the benefit formula.2

 1 Dushi, Irena, and Brad Trenkamp. “Improving the measurement of retirement income of the aged population.” Social Security Administration. ORES Working Paper No. 116 (January 2021).

2 See National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and Committee on Population. “The growing gap in life expectancy by income:Implications for federal programs and policy responses.” National Academies Press, 2015.

White Boomer Republicans

 Philip Bump at WP:

Younger Americans are more diverse than older Americans, certainly, and more likely to hold liberal political views. (They are also less likely to be members of political parties.) One effect of this is that the Republican Party skews older than the Democratic Party and, therefore, that boomers make up more of the GOP than the Dems though the generation itself is fairly evenly divided.

... 

What did the overlap of White Americans, Republicans and baby boomers look like? So, using data from the 2020 edition of the American National Election Studies, Gallup and the Census Bureau, I was able to create this Venn diagram.

What I love about this diagram (seen on p. 126, if you have a copy of the book) is that it represents a lot of information very simply. It is admittedly hard to parse percentages or segments from overlapping circles, but you clearly get a sense that a lot of boomers are White Republicans (4 in 10) and that the GOP is heavily White. A quarter of the party is White baby boomers, per this analysis.

Age and Congress

Carrie Blazina and Drew DeSilver at Pew:

The U.S. House of Representatives is getting younger – at least a bit – while the Senate’s median age continues to rise, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the newly installed 118th Congress.

The median age of voting House lawmakers is 57.9 years, down from 58.9 in the 117th Congress (2021-22), 58.0 in the 116th (2019-20) and 58.4 in the 115th (2017-18). The new Senate’s median age, on the other hand, is 65.3 years, up from 64.8 in the 117th Congress, 63.6 in the 116th and 62.4 in the 115th.

One Million COVID Deaths in the US

 Carla K. Johnson at AP:

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 reached 1 million Monday, a once-unimaginable figure that only hints at the multitudes of loved ones and friends staggered by grief and frustration.

The number of dead, as tallied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, is equivalent to that of a 9/11 attack every day for 336 days. It is roughly equal to how many Americans died in the Civil War and World War II combined. It’s as if Boston and Pittsburgh were wiped out.

“It is hard to imagine a million people plucked from this Earth,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, who leads a new pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, R.I. “It’s still happening and we are letting it happen.”

Three out of every four deaths were people 65 and older. More men died than women. White people made up most of the deaths overall, but Black, Latino and Native American people have been roughly twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as their white counterparts.

Australia's death rate is only one-tenth as great.  Damien Cave at NYT:

In global surveys, Australians were more likely than Americans to agree that “most people can be trusted” — a major factor, researchers found, in getting people to change their behavior for the common good to combat Covid, by reducing their movements, wearing masks and getting vaccinated. Partly because of that compliance, which kept the virus more in check, Australia’s economy has grown faster than America’s through the pandemic.

But of greater import, interpersonal trust — a belief that others would do what was right not just for the individual but for the community — saved lives. Trust mattered more than smoking prevalence, health spending or form of government, a study of 177 countries in The Lancet recently found. And in Australia, the process of turning trust into action began early.

...

During the toughest of Covid times, Australians showed that the national trait of “mateship” — defined as the bond between equal partners or close friends — was still alive and well. They saw Covid spiral out of control in the United States and Britain, and chose a different path.

Compliance rates with social distancing guidelines, along with Covid testing, contact tracing and isolation, held steady at around 90 percent during the worst early outbreaks, according to modeling from the University of Sydney. In the United States, reductions in mobility — a key measure of social distancing — were less stark, shorter and more inconsistent, based in part on location, political identity or wealth.

In Australia, rule-following was the social norm. It was Mick Fanning, a surfing superstar, who did not question the need to stay with his American wife and infant in a small hotel room for 14 days of quarantine after a trip to California. It was border officials canceling the visa of Novak Djokovic, the top male tennis player in the world, for failing to follow a Covid vaccine mandate, leading to his eventual deportation.

It was also all the Australians who lined up to get tested, who wore masks without question, who turned their phones into virus trackers with check-in apps, who set up food services for the old, infirm or poor in lockdowns, or who offered a place to stay to women who had been trapped in their homes with abusive husbands.

Boomers Exit the Workforce

Erica Pandey at Axios:

The pandemic pushed more than 3 million baby boomers into premature retirement, according to a new analysis from Miguel Faria e Castro, a senior economist at the St. Louis Fed.

Why it matters: The wave of early retirements is contributing to the labor shortage that's roiling the U.S. economy.

What's happening: Many older workers faced layoffs, and others left the workforce to protect themselves from the risk of infection.

• It's much harder for workers in their 50s and 60s — or older — to re-enter the workforce after a period of unemployment, due to persistent ageism in corporate America.
• So it's likely that many of those who left jobs got discouraged and chose to retire instead.

Amara Omeokwe at WSJ:

Siavash Radpour, associate research director at the Retirement Equity Lab at The New School, a private university in New York, said some older workers face discrimination in hiring. They may be passed over even in industries with plenty of openings, such as food services, because employers consider the jobs physically demanding, he said. That means some older workers “don’t really have the option to come back to the labor force,” he said.

Research suggests that some early exits from the workforce in the pandemic were more pronounced among seniors with less education and lower incomes.

A higher share of workers without a college degree retired before the traditional retirement age of 65 compared with those who had a college education, according to the Retirement Equity Lab. The lab’s analysis of census data found that retirement rates for those ages 55 to 64 without a college degree rose by 0.8 percentage point from 2019 to 2021, compared with a decline of 0.6 percentage point for similarly aged workers with a degree.

Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research used census data to determine that job losses earlier in the pandemic were steeper among lower-income older workers compared with higher-earning ones.

About 38% of workers aged 62 and older and in the lowest third of weekly earnings no longer held jobs in the fourth quarter of 2020, up from 28% in the second quarter of 2019, according to the analysis from Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, a research fellow at the center.

Among similarly aged workers in the highest third of weekly earnings, 22% weren’t working during the fourth quarter of 2020 compared with 18% in the second quarter of 2019.

Life Expectancy Plunges

From CDC:

U.S. life expectancy at birth for 2020, based on nearly final data, was 77.3 years, the lowest it has been since 2003. Male life expectancy (74.5) also declined to a level not seen since 2003, while female life expectancy (80.2) returned to the lowest level since 2005. The Hispanic population experienced the largest decline in life expectancy between 2019 and 2020, from 81.8 to 78.8 years, reaching a level lower than what it was in 2006 (80.3 years), the first year for which life expectancy estimates by Hispanic origin were produced (9). The non-Hispanic black population experienced the second largest decline in life expectancy (from 74.7 to 71.8) and was the lowest estimate seen since 2000 for the black population (regardless of Hispanic origin). Life expectancy for the non-Hispanic white population declined from 78.8 to 77.6 years, a level last observed in 2002 for the white population (regardless of Hispanic origin).

Racial and ethnic mortality disparities in life expectancy increased in 2020. For example, the non-Hispanic white life expectancy advantage over the nonHispanic black population increased by 41.5% between 2019 (4.1) and 2020 (5.8). Life expectancy for the black population has consistently been lower than that of the white population, but the gap had been narrowing during the past three decades, from 7.1 years in 1993 to 4.1 years in 2019 (10). The last time the gap in life expectancy between the white and black populations was this large was in 1999 (10).

Conversely, the gap between the Hispanic and non-Hispanic white populations decreased by 60% between 2019 (3.0) and 2020 (1.2). The Hispanic population lost more than one-half of the mortality advantage it had experienced relative to the nonHispanic white population. Rather than a positive outcome, the narrowing of the life expectancy gap between the two populations is a stark indicator of worsening health and mortality outcomes for a population that paradoxically has been, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, able to defy expectations consistent with its disadvantaged socioeconomic profile (2,9,11).

Mortality due to COVID-19 had, by far, the single greatest effect on the decline in life expectancy at birth between 2019 and 2020, overall, among men and women, and for the three race and Hispanic-origin groups shown in this report. Among the causes contributing negatively to the change in life expectancy, COVID-19 contributed 90% for the Hispanic population, 67.9% for the non-Hispanic white population, and 59.3% for the non-Hispanic black population.

Congressional Demographics 2021

 Sara Atske at Pew:

Immigrants and the children of immigrants account for a small but growing share of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. At least 76 (14%) of the voting members of the 117th Congress are foreign born or have at least one parent born in another country, a slight uptick from the prior two Congresses.

Overall, there are 18 foreign-born members of the 117th Congress – 17 representatives and one senator, Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, who was born in Japan. At least 58 other members, including 42 in the House and 16 in the Senate, were born in the United States or its territories to at least one immigrant parent, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of biographical information from the Congressional Research Service, news stories and members’ official websites and genealogical records through Feb. 8.

 

Carrie Elizabeth Blazina and Drew DeSilver at Pew:

The number of Millennials and Generation Xers in the U.S. House of Representatives rose slightly with the new 117th Congress, though less so than with the 116th. And even as these generations gain representation in both chambers, older generations still make up the majority of senators and representatives.

Attitudes on Patriotism and American Exceptionalism

Daniel A. Cox at the Survey Center on American Life:

Despite a lackluster federal response to the COVID-19 outbreak and a violent assault on the US Capitol, Americans remain firm in their belief that American culture and the American way of life are superior to others. More than half (53 percent) of Americans say that the world would be much better off if more countries adopted American values and the American way of life. Approximately four in 10 (42 percent) disagree with this statement.

There is even greater agreement among the public that the US has always been a force for good in the world. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of Americans agree, while about one in four (24 percent) reject the idea that the US has been consistently virtuous in its actions abroad.

Fewer Americans believe the US has a special relationship with God. Nearly half (45 percent) the public believe that God has granted the country a special role in human history. Roughly half (49 percent) of Americans disagree.

There are massive generational differences in views about American exceptionalism. Young adults are far more likely to challenge notions that the US serves as a moral beacon. Less than half (46 percent) of young adults (age 18 to 29) believe the world would be better off if more countries adopted American values and lifestyle. In contrast, seven in 10 (70 percent) seniors (age 65 or older) agree with this statement. Young adults are also far less inclined to believe the US continues to be a force for good in the world.

Overall, most Americans feel proud about their national identity. More than six in 10 say they are extremely proud (34 percent) or very proud (28 percent) to be an American. But this sentiment masks considerable cleavages among the public along the lines of race, political affiliation, and generation.

There are sizable generational divisions in feelings of pride about being American. Older Americans express much more pride in their nationality than do younger Americans. In fact, seniors are more than twice as likely to say they are extremely proud to be American than are young adults (55 percent vs. 23 percent).

No religious group expresses greater pride in their national identity than white evangelical Protestants. More than three-quarters of white evangelical Protestants say they are very or extremely proud to be an American; half (50 percent) say they are extremely proud. More than four in 10 white Catholics (46 percent) and white mainline Protestants (43 percent) also report being extremely proud about their national identity. Considerably fewer Hispanic Catholics (29 percent), black Protestants (27 percent), members of non-Christian religious traditions (26 percent), and religiously unaffiliated Americans (20 percent) report they are extremely proud to be American.

Inequalities: Wealth and Age

Dion Rabouin at Axios:

The economy and stock market are diverging.

• The Nasdaq's 42% rise year to date in the face of a U.S. economy expected to contract by 3% is perhaps the most jarring example yet. But economic growth has been softening for years as equity prices — especially for Big Tech companies — have boomed.
• Since the global financial crisis in 2008, U.S. GDP has averaged 2% growth, while the Nasdaq has averaged an 18.1% gain, not including 2020.
• From the Nasdaq's inception until 2009, the index averaged a 10.6% annual gain while the U.S. economy had grown by an average of 3.1%.

The fortunes of the young and old are diverging:

• Higher housing costs mean more equity and higher resale values for homeowners, but also higher rent. Similarly, advances in health care mean older people are living longer and able to accrue the benefits of rising asset prices rather than passing them on to the next generation.
• That directly benefits older Americans largely at the expense of younger ones, who are moving out of large metros like New York and LA on the coasts and toward places like Phoenix and Denver that still offer vibrant cultural life but lower rent prices.
• The median age of all U.S. homebuyers has risen from 31 in 1981 to 47 in 2019.
• The slow recovery in the labor market and real economy also is impacting childbirths, researchers at Brookings say.
• They estimated in June that the U.S. would see 300,000-500,000 fewer births this year. They noted in an update last week that the declining availability of child care and school closures could be worsening the expected 2020 "baby bust."

Largest US Employer

 From the Census:

Which industry had the highest employment and annual payroll in 2018?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns (CBP), the 907,426 businesses in the Health Care and Social Assistance sector topped all others with 20 million employees and over $1.0 trillion in annual payroll in 2018.

And the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects this sector will grow 14% from 2018 to 2028, due largely to an aging population with increased health care needs. 

USA: Older and More Diverse

From the Census Bureau:

The U.S. Census Bureau today released estimates showing the nation’s 65-and-older population has grown rapidly since 2010, driven by the aging of Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964. The 65-and-older population grew by over a third (34.2% or 13,787,044) during the past decade, and by 3.2% (1,688,924) from 2018 to 2019. The growth of this population contributed to an increase in the national median age from 37.2 years in 2010 to 38.4 in 2019, according to the Census Bureau’s 2019 Population Estimates.

“The first Baby Boomers reached 65 years old in 2011,” said Dr. Luke Rogers, chief of the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Branch. “Since then, there’s been a rapid increase in the size of the 65-and-older population, which grew by over a third since 2010. No other age group saw such a fast increase. In fact, the under-18 population was smaller in 2019 than it was in 2010, in part due to lower fertility in the United States.”

At Fast Company, Connie Lin points out other Census data:

• The U.S. is becoming more racially diverse: The U.S. population was about 60% non-Hispanic white in 2019, a record low for the country, [down from 64% in 2010 -- .ed] and experts predict non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in 25 years. Meanwhile, Hispanic and Asian populations grew by 20% and 30%, respectively, from 2010 to 2019, and the Black population grew by 12%. While the white population grew by 4.3% compared to 2010, the number of non-Hispanic whites fell by more than half a million people from 2016 to 2019.
• The face of America is changing fast: In 2019, for the first time ever, nonwhites and Hispanics were the majority for people under the age of 16, signaling a demographic shift that experts expect will continue over the coming decades.

Pandemic Casualty: Social Security

Social Security will go bust much sooner than officials previously reckoned.  Caitlin Emma at Politico:

There's now an acceleration of what happened during the Great Recession a decade ago, when there was a 5 percent bump in eligible adults claiming Social Security an average of six months early. At the same time, soaring unemployment meant the government was collecting less in payroll taxes. The Obama administration estimated at the time that the fund would run out of money in 2037 — four years faster than expected before the financial crisis.

Today, the unemployment rate has already blown past the 10 percent peak logged during that recession, to 14.7 percent as of mid-April, according to data released this month. And some economists think it could climb as high as 20 percent. It’s estimated that 1 in 10 Americans still won’t have a job well into next year.

At least 36.5 million people aren’t paying payroll taxes into the program right now, and a second surge in early retirements is expected. Social Security benefits can be collected at the age of 62, though there is a penalty for not waiting until full retirement age.

Without accounting for the pandemic and the ensuing financial downturn, the federal government estimated last month that the program can fully issue benefits until 2035. At that point, only 76 percent of benefits can be paid out.

“It’s clearly going to be a lot worse than that,” said Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Brent Orrell at AEI:

A recent working paper from the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute finds that the unemployment rate has not risen to levels that would correspond with the numbers of jobs lost. Through surveys conducted earlier in 2020 and again at the height of the pandemic, they found that some of those who lost jobs have not been counted in the BLS unemployment rate because these workers have dropped out of the labor force. Furthermore, a striking percentage of these former workers cited retirement as their reason for not seeking additional work, rising from 53 percent in the first survey to 60 percent in the follow-on survey. The authors believe that these retirements are likely earlier than originally planned, given the age range of the participants.

...
A unique feature of the current recession is that health officials have been warning the public for months that older people, and especially those living with underlying health conditions, are more at risk of developing more serious forms of the disease than their younger, healthier counterparts. Anxiety about the disease and lower rates of telecommuting might be combining to encourage more early retirement.

More Coronavirus Lobbying

Maggie Severns and Rachel Roubein at Politico:

The nursing home industry is one of the lobbying world’s quiet powerhouses. The state actions to protect the industry came after it spent tens of millions of dollars in lobbying and other advocacy per year, according to a POLITICO review of state and federal records. At the federal level, the industry has spent more than $4 million on lobbying over the past year, employing more than a dozen full-time lobbyists and drawing on an army of contractors including Brian Ballard, former lobbyist for President Donald Trump, and ex-Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman.

In early April, nursing home giant Life Care Centers of America — the multi-state chain whose facility in Kirkland, Washington, was the nation’s first epicenter of coronavirus — hired a team of four former aides to ex-Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who was close with Senate leadership, to lobby on Covid-19 issues.

Industry advocates, including the American Health Care Association, which represents nursing homes, argue it would be disastrous for care facilities to be held liable for the deaths of elderly residents, who are far more vulnerable to coronavirus than the rest of the population. They also contend nursing homes have been forced to fight the virus while facing shortages of critical protective gear and testing capabilities because of flawed federal policies over which they have no control. They are also adapting to new federal regulations on the fly.

Elderly Poll Workers

Carrie Levine at The Center for Public Integrity:

Election officials across the country are facing similar staffing crises long in the making, now accelerated by the pandemic: in-person access to the ballot box rests on the vulnerable shoulders of a cohort of steadfast, but elderly, election workers at high risk of illness or death should they contract COVID-19.

More than half the country’s poll workers in 2016 were 61 or older, according to data tracked by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. In some states, that number is far higher, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of EAC data found.

In Maine, for example, nearly two in three poll workers are in that age group. In Montana, Oklahoma and Alabama, the number of elderly poll workers is as high or higher.

Election officials nationwide are now often explicitly recruiting younger poll workers ahead of remaining 2020 primaries and November’s general election.

Nonetheless, the acute shortage of election workers is prompting reductions in the number of in-person polling sites for upcoming primaries, fueling worries that some voters may face significant obstacles to casting their ballots