On October 24, 2012, Bonnie Kavoussi writes on The Huffington Post:
Martin Feldstein, a former top economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan, said too many elderly Americans are trapped in poverty.
“I think it’s really shocking that we spend about $500 billion a year on Social Security, and yet we have many, many old people in poverty,” said Feldstein, a Harvard economist, at The Economist’s Buttonwood Gathering on Wednesday. “Something’s wrong with that system.”
Feldstein said that the Social Security system especially fails women who aren’t in the workforce. He said that young and middle-aged women who lose husbands to death or divorce and don’t have enough work experience get left out in the cold.
“If they don’t have an income history of their own, the Social Security system fails them,” he said.
