Where you live can affect your cost of living, and for adults 65 and older living in California, the struggle to pay their day-to-day expenses has only gotten worse in the last decade.

From 2015 to 2023, the number of single older adults living alone who are economically insecure increased by 19%, from 542,000 to 647,000, according to new data available on the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research’s California Elder Index™.

Join us on Wednesday, September 10, as researchers share the updated California Elder Index™ (CEI), a free, searchable online dashboard that provides estimates for basic living costs such as housing, health care, food, transportation, and limited miscellaneous expenses faced by adults ages 65 and older. 

Housed at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR), the CEI fills a vital role for policymakers, advocates, and researchers by illuminating key data that the federal poverty level (FPL) guidelines exclude. The FPL guidelines, which are based on the costs of food alone, are often used by the federal government to determine income eligibility for government assistance programs, including programs such as Medicaid (known as Medi-Cal in California) and SNAP (CalFresh). These guidelines, however, fall short of the actual income older adults need to age in place with dignity. 

Dr. Kathryn Kietzman, director of the UCLA CHPR Health Equity Program, Dr. D. Imelda Padilla-Frausto, research scientist at the UCLA CHPR, and Natalie Kim, undergraduate research assistant, will present the updated dashboard and share some of the key findings from two publications examining the number and demographics of older adults who fall into the “CEI income gap”— those whose incomes exceed the FPL but are below the CEI, as well as trends in increasing health care costs for traditional Medicare compared to Medicare Advantage plans.

Building on the national Elder Economic Security Standard™ Index, the CEI provides county-specific cost information that considers variations in housing costs by housing type (renter or homeowner with or without a mortgage) and by household composition (i.e., single older adult living alone, older couple, or older adults housing adult children and/or grandchildren). Data are available for all 58 counties in the state. As a tool to advance equity, the dashboard allows users to sort by sex, age groups, race and ethnicity, household type, and family type.

Since its launch in 2008, the California Elder Index has been used by public agencies and local governments, researchers, advocates, and foundations to inform their work supporting older adults throughout California.