All the Older Single Ladies in Poverty

Extreme poverty among women over age 65 who lived alone jumped between 2011 and 2012, according to a new report from the National Women's Law Center, "Insecure & Unequal," analyzing recently released Census data.

"It's really something that was unexpected," said Katherine Gallagher Robbins, a senior policy analyst at the National Women's Law Center. After being fairly stable for the last decade, the percent of women over 65 subsisting on shockingly low annual incomes—less than $5,500 each year—edged up from 2.6 to 3.1 percent. "That's a big jump," she said, an 18 percent increase in just one year.

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Gallagher Robbins didn't have an explanation for why the rate of extreme poverty jumped, but suggested one thing her group was considering was that reductions in Social Security Administration funding might have made it harder for individuals eligible for and dependent on SSI funding to get it. But, she was quick to add, that was "pure hypothesizing."

What's not causing the jump: the collapse of the private pension system or changes in demographics. Those two broad long-term changes are expected to increase poverty rates among the elderly over time as Baby Boomers age, but would show up as increases in poverty overall, rather than increases in extreme poverty.

And, observed Gallagher Robbins, "The poverty rates overall for elderly individuals were pretty much unchanged."

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The big question now, said Gallagher Robbins: "Will this be a trend or a blip?"