At those first 2 days of hearings, the committee heard from many witnesses. They confirmed the findings of a task force which had submitted a report to the committee after months of hard work and intense analysis.

Those witnesses made it clear

The retirement income problem for today's elderly is serious and it is growing worse: the gap between the incomes of young and old is widening, not narrowing;

That today's workers-those middle aged and younger-will also have serious retirement income problems unless major, comprehensive action is taken on several fronts; and

That poverty afflicts one out of three elderly Americans today. Obviously, such issues could not be thoroughly discussed even in 2 days. The committee, or individual subcommittees, will hold other hearings over the next few months. Such is our purpose here today.

The Subcommittee on Consumer Interests of the Elderly, in order to fulfill the role it should play in the study of the economics of aging will ask one fundamental question: "What are the consumer needs of the elderly and the relationship of those needs to retirement incomes?"

That is a vital question, for which we need the best information available before we can hope to have a satisfactory answer.

I have the distinct impression that we don't yet know all we should about the buying patterns and consumer needs of older Americans.

CAN ELDERLY "GET ALONG ON LESS"?

We often hear it said, for example, that "the elderly can get along on less income because they simply don't need as much as they did when they were raising children and working every day."

There is some truth in that statement, of course, but how much? How many elderly do with less simply because they have less to spend?

Is it possible that the items of special importance to the elderly are among those most likely to climb out of reach because of cost increases?

Are expensive "convenience items" at the food market attractive to the elderly in terms of ease of preparation, but forbidding in terms of cost?

How can retirees plan adequately for retirement budgets when confronted by so many unknowns, including the number of years they will actually spend in retirement?

When we consider that there are 20 million Americans now past age 65, and that many more millions will soon be of retirement age, we can see that such questions are not insignificant.

At this point, I think it would be interesting if we took a brief look at a chart that the committee has prepared for this occasion. The chart should appear on the large screen momentarily.

The chart shows the gap between social security benefits and a moderate standard of living for retired couples.

The green columns (ruled columns) you see on the chart represent the cost of a retired couple's budget for a moderate standard of living. The comparison is given for the years 1950, 1959, 1966, and 1968 * * what was needed for a moderate living standard for elderly retired couples *** and the orange columns (dotted columns) represent the average benefits being paid the social security retiree. You can see that the gap between the orange columns and the green columns has grown larger with the years which is indicative of the way social security has fallen short of providing an income that is sufficient for a moderate standard of living for elderly retired couples.

I think that is a rather dramatic illustration of our failure to make the social security system serve its original intended objective. And we are seeing the gap widening rather than closing as the years go by. We were considering, before the chart was shown, the various questions that we hope to explore in the course of these hearings, questions that are vitally important today and will become even more important tomorrow as more lives are touched by our success or failure in dealing with this national retirement income crisis.

THE BLS "MODERATE BUDGET"

We are told by the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently that a selfsupporting, retired couple in an urban area of this Nation needed an income of about $3,869 for a moderate budget level.

There weren't any frills or real luxuries in that budget. It was slightly above a rigid austerity budget.

But we know that a $3,869 income is far out of reach for most persons past age 65 in the United States today.

We are going to examine that budget today in some detail to get at the bread-and-butter facts of life encountered by older Americans in our national marketplace.

We are also going to ask very pointedly whether a nation of abundance can possibly be satisfied with second-class economic status for most of its elders, a condition that does in all candor exist in the United States today.

I think perhaps at this point it would be appropriate to display our chart.

This chart shows the number of women who are living alone-this is elderly women living alone that 1959, 1964, and 1966, and the number among them who are classified as being under the poverty level. As you can see, in 1966 more than half of the elderly women living alone in this country were living with income that placed them below the poverty level.

A RISING GAP - SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFIT AND MODERATE STANDARD OF LIVING FOR RETIRED COUPLES

CHART 1. A RISING GAP-SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFIT AND MODERATE STANDARD OF

LIVING FOR RETIRED COUPLES

SOURCE OF DATA: "OASDHI Benefits, Prices, and
Wages: Effect of 1967 Benefit Increase," by Daniel
N. Price, Social Security Bulletin, December 1968,
page 32.

TECHNICAL NOTE: The Retired Couple's Budget for a
Moderate Living Standard, developed by the Bureau
of Labor Statistics, is intended to represent a meas-
ure of what retired couples themselves consider an
appropriate level of living. It provides for the main-
tenance of health and social well-being, and par-
ticipation in community activities. The retired
couple is defined as a husband age 65 or older and his
wife, self-supporting, living independently in an
urban area, and enjoying fairly good health.

The cost of this monthly budget for couples living
in rented dwellings in 18 cities was: $149 in De-
cember 1950; $255 in December 1959; and $344 in
December 1966; (the 1966 budget study was the
first in the series to include data for homeowners and
comparison with earlier studies is therefore limited
to renters). Of the increase in costs between 1950
and 1966, about half has been attributed by the
BLS to higher standards of living and half to ad-
vances in prices for the goods and services in the
budget. Adjustment of the 1966 figure by the in-

crease in the Consumer Price Index would bring the
cost to $370 in December 1968.

The worker who retired late in 1950 received a
social security benefit that averaged $49.50; addi-
tion of 50 percent for a wife would raise this average
to about $75, or half the cost of the elderly couple's
budget at that time. Legislative increases would
have raised this benefit to $98 by December 1959
and to $104 by December 1966. The increase result-
ing from the 1967 Social Security Amendments
brought the benefit to $118, somewhat less than
one-third of the cost of the budget for a moderate
standard of living. (Had the average benefit for a
couple been used-rather than 150 percent of the
average payable to all retired workers-the dollar
figures would have been slightly higher for each
year. But the widening gap between the benefit and
the budget cost would have been the same.)

THE FINDINGS: The average social security benefit
payable to an elderly couple who retired in Decem-
ber 1950-even though it has been adjusted over
the years would now purchase a significantly
smaller fraction of the Retired Couple's Budget for a
Moderate Standard of Living than at the time of
retirement. (See discussion, pp. 13-14.)