Around 326,000 Austrians aged 60 and over were considered to be at risk of poverty in 2021. A study has now provided evidence that poverty in old age was associated with disadvantages during the pandemic, even if the differences to the group that were not affected by poverty were sometimes less pronounced than assumed. For Lukas Richter, author of the study, poverty in old age is a phenomenon that is “not sufficiently considered in the pandemic and in society”.
The empirical study by Richter from the University of Applied Sciences (FH) St. Pölten and Theresa Heidinger from the Karl Landsteiner Private University in Krems was published in the open access journal “Frontiers in Public Health”. In it, the team compared the situation of older people (60 years plus) living below the poverty line with older people who are not considered poor in Austria. It used data from European SHARE Corona surveys from summer 2020 and 2021 and winter 2020. The sample included 1,862 people, 18.1 percent of whom were classified as low-income and around ten percent said they had “at least some difficulties about the to make ends meet,” says the study, which Research forum of the Austrian universities of applied sciences from Wednesday to Thursday (April 19-20) in St. Pölten is presented.
“Poverty in old age gets under your skin”
It is well known and documented that “poverty in old age gets under your skin,” social scientist Richter told APA-Science. Not only would those affected describe their own state of health as bad more often than people who are not affected. investigations e.g. B. on the prevalence of chronic diseases and life expectancy would also have shown that poverty in old age can actually lead to poorer health and vice versa.
In the current study, the comparison of those affected and not affected by old-age poverty showed that the danger posed by Covid-19 was perceived as similar. “However, the use of the Covid-19 tests revealed significant differences.” People affected by old-age poverty were almost twice as likely to never have used a test by summer 2021 as those not considered poor (12 versus 6.6 percent).
The free vaccination against Covid-19, which became possible in Austria in December 2020, was initially viewed with skepticism by more elderly people in poverty: In the winter of that year they stated “significantly more often” that they were not ready to be vaccinated (34.7 vs. 19, 9 percent for non-poor people) or being unsure about getting vaccinated against the virus. In the summer of 2021, however, most people had already been vaccinated, “even if in the summer of 2021 there was still a larger block of people among the elderly at risk of poverty who were skeptical or did not get vaccinated,” says the social scientist.
Older people are a diverse group
Measures such as wearing masks were followed to the same extent by both groups. The restrictions in the health system, such as postponed operations, would have affected both groups equally. “However, older people below the poverty line were significantly more likely to depend on social support to provide themselves with the essentials during the pandemic,” says Richter. It has also been shown that increasing digitization represents an access hurdle for this group of people, for example to services: “They use the Internet less often.”
On the other hand, there were no differences between the groups in the perception of Covid-19 as a potential danger: Richter gave the reason that from the beginning “communicatively older people were addressed more generally as a risk group, i.e. older people felt addressed, regardless of whether they were poorer or richer, healthier or sicker”. However, this overlooks the fact that older people form a very heterogeneous group.
According to the study, the fact that older people in poverty said they would be tested much less frequently by the summer of 2021 could be “an artifact from the early days of the pandemic, when tests were more difficult to access and often expensive”.
“Although people affected by poverty in old age were still considered a particularly vulnerable group at the beginning of the pandemic, little attention was paid to them later on,” said Richter. Unsurprisingly, anything that costs money, such as access to tests or disinfectants, is a potential disadvantage for older people living in poverty. According to the researcher, however, whether the differences found are due to persistent barriers to access for older people in poverty needs to be examined more closely.
“Needs broader discussion”
In the current study, the team used survey results from people aged 60 and older to take into account the average retirement age in Austria. According to Eurostat/EU-SILC surveys, 326,000 people (14.5 percent) in this age group in Austria were considered to be at risk of poverty. According to Richter, it is not yet possible to deduce from the data available so far whether poverty in old age may have even increased during the pandemic. Figures on the risk of poverty in Austria from 2022 are not yet available.
“There needs to be a broader debate on the subject,” said Richter, not least in times of the energy crisis and inflation. But even the pandemic is not over from a social science perspective.
