A society in which members of different generations do not interact “is a dangerous experiment,” said one researcher.On Fridays at 10 a.m., Richard Bement and Zach Ahmed sign on to their weekly video chat. The program that brought them together provides online discussion prompts and suggests arts-related activities, but the two largely ignore all that.“We just started talking about things that were important to us,” said Mr. Ahmed, 19, a pre-med student at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.Since the pair met more than a year ago, conversation topics have included: Pink Floyd, in a long exploration led by Mr. Bement, 76, a retired sales manager in Milford Township, Ohio; their religious faiths (the senior conversation partner is Episcopalian; the younger is Muslim); their families; changing gender norms; and poetry, including Mr. Ahmed’s own efforts.“There’s this fallacy that these two generations can’t communicate,” said Mr. Bement. “I don’t find that to be true.”“Zach tells me about his organic chemistry class, about being a student in 2024. I afford Zach an opportunity to share with me what it’s like to be him, and vice versa.”Miami University began Opening Minds Through Art, a program designed to foster intergenerational understanding, in 2007 and introduced an online version in 2022. This semester, about 70 pairs have enrolled in the video program. Another 73 students engage in O.M.A.-sponsored arts activities with people who have dementia at a nursing home, a senior center and an adult day program.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The move to a long-term care facility is often difficult but necessary for frail patients. For their partners, it can mean a new set of challenges.Even as the signals of approaching dementia became impossible to ignore, Joseph Drolet dreaded the prospect of moving his partner into a long-term care facility.Mr. Drolet, 79, and his beloved Rebecca, 71, both retired lawyers and prosecutors in Atlanta, had been a couple for 33 years, though they retained separate homes. In 2019, she began getting lost while driving, mishandling her finances and struggling with the television remote. The diagnosis — Alzheimer’s disease — came in 2021.Over time, Mr. Drolet moved Rebecca (whose surname he asked to withhold to protect her privacy) into his home. But serving as her round-the-clock caregiver, as she needed help with every daily task, became exhausting and untenable. Rebecca began wandering their neighborhood and “getting dressed in the middle of the night, preparing for trips that weren’t happening,” Mr. Drolet recalled.Last year, when he determined that Rebecca no longer really knew where she was, he felt it was time to move her to a nearby memory-care residence.Putting a spouse or partner in a nursing home, for any reason, represents a fraught transition for any couple, one that can mean release from the sometimes crushing burden of caregiving, but can also be accompanied by lingering depression, anxiety and guilt, studies have shown.“That everything was on my shoulders for the care of a very vulnerable person — that stress left,” Mr. Drolet said. After Rebecca left, “the 24-hour duties could be taken by somebody else.” His constant fear of what would happen to Rebecca if he died or became disabled also abated.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Last Thanksgiving, Cynthia Mosson had been on her feet all day in her kitchen in Frankfort, Ind., preparing dinner for nine. She was nearly finished — the ham in the oven, the dressing made — when she suddenly felt the need to sit down.“I started hurting in my left shoulder,” said Ms. Mosson, 61. “It got really intense, and it started to go down my left arm.” She grew sweaty and pale and told her family, “I think I’m having a heart attack.”An ambulance sped her to a hospital where doctors confirmed that she had suffered a mild heart attack. They said testing revealed serious blockages in all her coronary arteries and told her, “You’re going to need open-heart surgery,” Ms. Mosson recalled.When such patients head into an operating room, what happens next has a lot to do with their sex, a recent study in JAMA Surgery reported. The study reinforced years of research showing that male and female patients can have very different outcomes following an operation called coronary artery bypass grafting.C.A.B.G. (pronounced like the vegetable) restores blood flow by taking arteries from patients’ arms or chests, and veins from their legs, and using them to bypass the blocked blood vessels.“It’s the most common cardiac operation in the United States,” taking place 200,000 to 300,000 times a year, said Dr. Mario Gaudino, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Weill Cornell Medicine and lead author of the study.Twenty-five to 30 percent of C.A.B.G. patients are women. How do they fare? The mortality rate for C.A.B.G., though low, is much higher for women (2.8 percent) than men (1.7 percent), Dr. Gaudino and his colleagues found.Analyzing results from about 1.3 million patients (average age: 66) from 2011 to 2020, the researchers also determined that after C.A.B.G., about 20 percent of men had complications that included strokes, kidney failure, repeat surgeries, infections of the sternum and prolonged respirator use and hospital stays. Among women, more than 28 percent did.Cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation respiratory therapist Abbey Smit, right, took Ms. Mosson’s blood pressure at a rehabilitation appointment at IU Health Frankfort Hospital.Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesOf those complications, “many are relatively minor and self-resolving,” Dr. Gaudino said. But recovering from sternal wound infections can take months, he noted, and “if you have a stroke, that can affect you for a long time.” Though outcomes improved for both sexes over the decade, the gender gap remained.The study “should be regarded as an exploding flare in the sky for all clinicians who care for women,” an accompanying editorial said. Yet to cardiac researchers, the results sounded familiar.“This has been something we’ve known since the 1980s,” said Dr. C. Noel Bairey Merz, a cardiologist and researcher at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Heart disease, she pointed out, remains the leading cause of death for American women.With C.A.B.G., “the general assumption was that it was getting better because the technology, the knowledge, the skills and training were all improving,” she said. To see the gender disparity persist “is very disappointing.”Several factors help explain those differences. Women are three to five years older than men when they undergo bypass surgery, in part because “we recognize coronary artery disease more easily and earlier in men,” Dr. Gaudino said. “Men have the classic presentation we study in medical school. Women have different symptoms.” These may include fatigue, shortness of breath and pain in the back or stomach.Fewer than 20 percent of patients enrolled in clinical trials have been female, so “what we’ve been taught is essentially based on research in men,” he added.Partly because they’re older — about 40 percent are over 70 — women are more apt than men to have developed health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure and vascular conditions, “all factors that increase risk in cardiac surgery,” Dr. Gaudino said. They also have smaller, more fragile blood vessels, which can make surgery more complex.The disparities affect other forms of cardiac treatment and surgery, too. Women have worse outcomes than men five years after receiving a stent, a 2020 review of randomized trials reported.Ms. Mosson’s daily medications.Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesThey’re “less likely to be prescribed and to take statins, and particularly less likely to take the high-intensity statins, which are the most lifesaving,” Dr. Bairey Merz said. “The list goes on and on.”When C.A.B.G. works well, the results can feel miraculous. Rhonda Skaggs, 68, had a quadruple bypass in July 2022 and spent 12 days in intensive care before going home to Brooksville, Fla. Six months passed before she returned to work at a Home Shopping Network outlet store.“Now, you’d never know I had open-heart surgery,” she said. “I walk 10,000 steps a day. I teach line dance classes twice a week. I have my life back.”But Susan Leary, 71, a retired New York City teacher now living in Fuquay-Varina, N.C., is facing a second procedure after bypass surgery at Duke University last month.“Women are less likely to get all the vessels that need to be bypassed bypassed,” said her cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Brittany Zwischenberger, co-author of the call-to-arms editorial in JAMA Surgery.A few years before, Ms. Leary had sought a procedure to shrink away the “ugly-looking” varicose veins in her legs; now, she lacked viable blood vessels for grafting. “How did I know I was going to need some of those veins for my heart?” she said.She had a double bypass, instead of the triple bypass she needed, which represents “incomplete revascularization.”“It can contribute to worse outcomes and future interventions,” Dr. Zwischenberger said. “Fortunately, she’s a candidate for a stent” for the third blocked artery, which involves inserting a mesh tube into the vessel to widen it. The procedure is scheduled for next month.Advocates of improved care for women argue that their surgical risks can be reduced.Dr. Lamia Harik, a cardiothoracic surgery researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine, and her colleagues have found that nearly 40 percent of women’s mortality during C.A.B.G. stems from interoperative anemia. (Their study is in press.)On the treadmill during her rehabilitation appointment. Ms. Mosson has begun a three-times-weekly cardiac rehab program, recommended for patients who’ve undergone bypass surgery. She finds that her stamina is improving.Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesThat occurs when operating teams administer fluids to dilute patients’ blood during the procedure, allowing them to use the large cardiopulmonary bypass machine (“the pump”) that keeps blood oxygenated and flowing while surgeons do the grafting.“This is something modifiable,” Dr. Harik said. For women, surgeons might use smaller pumps or reduce the volume of added fluid, or both.To learn more, Dr. Gaudino and other researchers have begun enrolling women, and only women, in two new clinical trials. The international ROMA study, the first all-female surgical trial, will investigate two C.A.B.G. techniques to see which produces better outcomes; the federally funded Recharge trial will compare stenting with C.A.B.G.“In the past, a lot of surgeons thought this was inevitable,” Dr. Gaudino said of the differences between the sexes. “Maybe they will not disappear, but they can be minimized.”Ms. Mosson said her surgeons were pleased with the results of her quadruple bypass, though she was readmitted to the hospital briefly for fluid in her lungs. She has begun a three-times-weekly cardiac rehab program, recommended for patients who’ve undergone bypass surgery, and finds that her stamina is improving.She still contends with the psychological aftermath of her heart attack and surgery, as Ms. Skaggs did and Ms. Leary still does. They describe shock — none had a history of heart disease — depression and anxiety. “I’m still struggling with the fear it will happen again,” Ms. Mosson said.One antidote, for Ms. Leary, was being recruited for ROMA; Duke is among the clinical trial sites. She jumped at the chance to enroll.“Let me be a part of it,” she said. “Maybe my daughter will need this information someday.”

Americans in the lower middle class are losing ground financially, researchers have found.Monique Louvigny, an event coordinator in the San Francisco Bay Area, economizes where she can. She drives a 10-year-old Prius, brings a thermos of coffee to work instead of patronizing a place with baristas, and takes advantage of a drive-through food pantry once a month.Laid off at 57, “I kind of reinvented myself,” she said. She rebuilt her career as a freelancer, overseeing receptions and conventions for many companies and institutions, including the local de Young and Legion of Honor art museums.But her income fell to less than $30,000 last year. “It’s erratic,” she said. “In January, I have 12 days of work.” In the summer, she might have only three or four.Ms. Louvigny, 64, feels fortunate on two fronts. For health insurance, she has qualified for Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program. And two years ago, she paid off the mortgage on her condo in relatively affordable Vallejo. A housemate pays rent, which helps cover maintenance costs and rising condo fees.“I think I can hang on for two years, workwise,” she said, and then she plans to begin receiving Social Security benefits at her full retirement age of 66.Ms. Louvigny’s earnings place her in a category defined in a recent study in the journal Health Affairs as lower middle class for Americans nearing retirement. It’s a group that has steadily lost ground financially over the past two decades, with stagnating earnings and fewer economic resources than it had in the early 1990s.Not only do such losses portend insecure retirement, but they also have disturbing implications for both health and life expectancy, the study and others have found.The upper middle class, on the other hand, has fared distinctly better.“There’s a lot of attention paid to the inequities between the very bottom and the top of income distribution,” said Jack Chapel, the lead author of the study, an economist and doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California. “We wanted to look at the middle class, where people are struggling.”Drawing on data from the national Health and Retirement Study between 1994 and 2018, the researchers found “a bifurcation” among Americans in their mid-50s, he said.In effect, they now divide into two middle classes: the more secure upper tier (which, in 2018, had on average more than $90,000 per person in annual resources, including income and the annualized value of home equity, retirement savings and pensions); and the increasingly precarious lower middle class. In 2018, people in that group had average annual resources of less than $32,000.In the early 1990s, by contrast, “our lower-middle-class group had pretty comparable outcomes to the upper middle class” in measures of health and economic well-being, Mr. Chapel said.No more. In two dozen years, the gap between them widened. Homeownership, for instance, declined by 5 percent in the upper middle class but declined by 31 percent in the lower middle class, only 54 percent of whom owned homes in 2018.For those still working, earnings rose 27 percent in the upper middle class and fell 5 percent for lower-middle-class workers, adjusted for inflation. “They’re making less because they’re working fewer hours or at lower wages, or both,” Mr. Chapel said. They were also far less likely to have employer-sponsored health insurance.Total financial resources projected over their lifetimes after age 60 — including earnings, savings, pensions, housing wealth and public benefits like Social Security — stagnated for lower-middle-class people, rising just 2 percent over 24 years to about $406,000.But total resources reached about $975,000 for the upper middle class, a 26 percent increase. (For the wealthiest group, the comparable figure was nearly $3 million.)Teresa Ghilarducci, an economist at the New School for Social Research whose studies have found similar results among middle-income Americans, pointed to one reason for the growing disparity. “The house has become a reservoir of debt,” she said. “Financial institutions have figured out how to extract wealth from homes with refinancing and second mortgages, and they’ve gotten more sophisticated.”For most middle-income people approaching retirement, she said, the primary source of wealth isn’t home equity or retirement savings. It’s Social Security benefits.One particularly stressed subset: older workers in physically demanding jobs. A report from the Older Workers Retirement Security Task Force, convened by the National Academy of Social Insurance, recently estimated that at least 10 million workers over age 50 belong in that category.Those jobs include “a lot of service-related work requiring you to be on your feet all day,” said Joel Eskovitz, a member of the task force and an AARP policy director. “People in retailing, home health aides, janitors. And a lot of jobs connected with Amazon and other tech companies — warehouse work, deliveries.” Workers in these jobs are disproportionately Black, Hispanic and Asian.Because “they’re not jobs that you can hold onto until deep into your 60s,” Mr. Eskovitz said, such workers often claim their Social Security retirement benefits early, at age 62. Doing so leads to “a significant reduction in monthly benefits and lifetime income” compared with waiting until full retirement age, now 67 for most beneficiaries.The gap between the two middle classes also shows up in measures of health. Among the lower middle class, “there’s almost no decline in smoking,” Mr. Chapel said. “But the upper middle has cut smoking roughly in half.”Those with lower income have more chronic health conditions and are far more likely to describe their health as fair or poor. (One exception: Obesity has risen dramatically for both income groups.)That translates to differences in life expectancy, too. “Everyone is living longer, but the upper middle class is getting much more of a gain, and a higher proportion of their remaining years are quality years,” without serious health problems, Mr. Chapel said.Between 1994 and 2018, life expectancy at age 60 increased twice as much for upper-middle-class men and women as for those in the lower middle class.Even those whose slightly higher incomes technically place them in the upper middle class can feel insecure. “I just pray I get to keep my job at least until I hit 65,” Patricia Thompson, who is 62, wrote in a Facebook message.She and her husband live in Hickory, N.C., where she earns $53,000 a year as an acquisitions editor for a small press and where her husband, 71 and retired, receives a $1,500 Social Security payment and draws $500 from retirement savings each month. That’s above the 45th percentile in total household income for a married couple.But they are still paying off a mortgage and a car loan, and “I have no pension,” Ms. Thompson wrote. “I barely have savings because of student loans late in life. Where’s the safety net for people like me?”“It really is a huge policy challenge, figuring out how to ensure different groups can live in dignity in retirement,” Mr. Eskovitz said.At a time of discussion about raising the Social Security retirement age, policymakers and advocates have suggested a number of measures to bolster financial stability for lower earners and those who are prematurely pushed out of the labor force.The Older Workers Retirement Security Task Force generated a long list of suggestions, including a “bridge benefit” for workers with physically arduous jobs, allowing them to receive partial Social Security payments early without locking them into reduced benefits for the rest of their lives.Raising the cap on the income subjected to payroll taxes could improve Social Security’s solvency for everyone.Mr. Chapel pointed to a new Labor Department program called RETAIN, which helps ill or injured workers return to their jobs and includes workplace accommodations, rehabilitation and retraining.Ms. Louvigny thinks she will be OK, as long as she can keep working for a few more years and remains careful about her spending. “I try not to worry,” she said. “I do not allow those thoughts.”

Winston, an older silverback, is getting enviable medical treatment. Now his keepers must confront an issue that vexes doctors and older humans, too: How much intervention is too much?This month, as the patient lay anesthetized on a table, a cardiologist made a half-inch incision through the skin of his chest. She removed a small implanted heart monitor with failing batteries and inserted a new one.The patient, like many older males, had been diagnosed with cardiac disease; the monitor would provide continuing data on heart rate and rhythm, alerting his doctors to irregularities.Closing the incision required four neat stitches. In a few hours, the patient, a gorilla named Winston, would rejoin his family in their habitat at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.“Winston, at 51, is a very old male gorilla,” said Dr. Matt Kinney, a senior veterinarian at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance who led the medical team through the procedure. With improved health care, new technology and better nutrition, “we see animals living longer, and they’re healthier for longer, too,” he said.In “human-managed care” (the term “in captivity” doesn’t fly at zoos anymore), gorillas may live two decades beyond the 30- to 40-year life spans that are common in the wild, and longer than zoo gorillas did in decades past.As with their human relatives, however, aging also brings chronic illnesses that require testing, diagnosis and treatment. Gorillas are prone to heart disease, the leading cause of death for them as for us.So now the questions for Winston’s caregivers resemble those that doctors and older human patients confront: How much treatment is too much? What is the trade-off between prolonged life and quality of life?Geriatric wildlife care “has gotten more and more sophisticated,” said Dr. Paul Calle, the chief veterinarian of the Wildlife Conservation Society, based at the Bronx Zoo. “The medical and surgical knowledge of people can be directly applied.”It looks more like human geriatric care. To keep gorillas healthy, zoo veterinarians not only turn to technologies and drugs developed for humans, but also consult with medical specialists like cardiologists, radiologists, obstetricians and dentists.Winston, for instance, takes four common heart drugs that people also take, though at different dosages. (He weighs 451 pounds.) The heart monitor he received, smaller than a flash drive, is implanted in humans as well. Winston received his annual flu shot this fall, and he is undergoing physical therapy for arthritis. “We’re looking to provide comfort to these animals later in life,” Dr. Kinney said.That doesn’t come cheaply: There were nearly 20 doctors, technicians and other staff in the operating room when Winston received his new monitor. But the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, parent organization for the zoo and the safari park, covers Winston’s care through its annual operating budget. Donors and partners offset some additional expenses.“None of our animals have insurance, and they never pay their bills,” Dr. Kinney noted. Several of Winston’s longtime caregivers, called wildlife care specialists, have retired. But Winston, who has achieved silverback status with age, remains on the job, managing his “troop” of five gorillas, keeping the peace and intervening in squabbles when needed.“He’s such a gentle silverback, an incredibly tolerant father,” said Jim Haigwood, the curator of mammals at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. “His youngest daughter, he’ll still allow her to take food out of his mouth.”The zoo has twice introduced females with sons to the troop, which in the wild might lead to infanticide. But Winston’s caregivers believed he would be accepting, and he was.“He raised those males as though they were his own sons,” Mr. Haigwood said. (Once they became rambunctious teenagers, however, they were resettled in their own habitat, an option that human parents might occasionally envy.)Winston, a western lowland gorilla native to Central Africa, arrived at the San Diego Zoo in 1984. He enjoyed robust health until 2017, when his caregivers noticed “a general slowing down,” said Dr. Kinney, who arranged Winston’s first echocardiogram.Winston during a procedure at the Paul Harter Veterinary Medical Center, next to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, in 2021.San Diego Zoo Wildlife AllianceThe test showed only “a couple of subtle changes, nothing alarming,” Dr. Kinney said. Everyone was relieved. Normal aging.Then in 2021, the whole troop contracted the coronavirus, probably transmitted by a human. As in human patients, age mattered.“Winston was the most severely affected,” Dr. Kinney said. “He had a cough, pretty significant lethargy, lack of appetite.” He began holding on to objects as he walked.After an infusion of monoclonal antibodies, Winston recovered. Now the whole troop has been vaccinated and boosted against the virus.But while Winston was being treated, the veterinarians and human doctors ran other tests that found concerning health issues. Winston’s heart had begun pumping less efficiently; that led to a daily regimen of blood pressure and heart drugs hidden in his food, and to the implanted monitor. He also takes ibuprofen and acetaminophen for arthritis in his spine, hips and shoulders.More worrying was a CT scan and biopsy showing a cancerous tumor damaging Winston’s right kidney. That prompted the kind of risks-versus-benefits conversation that should inform decisions about invasive treatment for older patients, but that is often skipped for humans.“Do we do a surgical procedure?” Dr. Kinney recalled wondering. “The big concern was, what would the recovery look like?” After considering Winston’s age and life expectancy, and determining that the tumor wasn’t growing, “we were comfortable with continuing to monitor him,” he said.For now, “we’re at a good balance,” he said. That is not entirely a medical issue, but reflects Winston’s ability to lead his troop — including a female, Kami, with whom he has had “a very devout partnership” for 25 years, Mr. Haigwood said.Some aspects of healthy aging might come more easily for zoo primates than for people; their keepers provide only healthy choices. “They’re not smoking,” said Marietta Danforth, the director of the Great Ape Heart Project, a research effort at the Detroit Zoo. “They’re not eating cheeseburgers.”Winston’s vegetarian diet consists primarily of tree branches and root vegetables. The half-acre Gorilla Forest where he lives, with its hills and pond and climbing structures, promotes exercise.Still, geriatric care necessarily involves end-of-life decisions. Winston could die a natural death one day like Ozzie, a gorilla who died at Zoo Atlanta two years ago at 61, or Colo, who was 60 when he died at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio in 2017.But if his quality of life declines, if he stops interacting with the troop and his caregivers or begins suffering, parallels with human care end. Even in California, with its medical aid in dying law, euthanasia remains illegal for humans. It is an option for Winston.“It’s a privilege in veterinary medicine,” Dr. Kinney said. “It also comes with great responsibility.”If Winston’s doctors, specialists and caregivers conclude, after extensive discussion, that a painless death would be preferable to a diminished life, “it’s a very calm process,” Dr. Kinney said. After an overdose of anesthesia, he said, “within minutes, there is cardiopulmonary arrest.”About 350 gorillas — and 930 great apes in total, including bonobos, orangutans and chimpanzees — live in U.S. zoos, Dr. Danforth said. However well cared for they are, some animal rights activists and primatologists argue that they don’t belong in zoos. But even People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, whose position is that wild animals belong in the wild, acknowledged in an email that zoos like San Diego’s, accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, meet high standards of animal care. Winston “has had high-quality years,” Dr. Kinney said. The gorilla has also become a beloved media personality. San Diego will mourn his loss, whenever and however it happens.For now, “we want to be sure Winston is living a good life, that he’s fulfilled,” Dr. Kinney said. “We have a good understanding of what makes Winston Winston.”

The virus sends up to 160,000 people over 65 to hospitals every year. But just 15 percent have gotten the newly available shots.Toby Gould was an early adopter. In September, Mr. Gould, 78, went to a pharmacy in Hyannis, Mass., to get one of the new vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus, known as R.S.V. He has asthma, which would heighten his risk of serious illness if he were to be infected.Carol Kerton, 64, knew R.S.V. could be dangerous: Her 3-year-old granddaughter had such a severe case that she was taken to an emergency room. Ms. Kerton was vaccinated in September at a local supermarket in Daytona Beach, Fla.Sam Delson, 63, received the R.S.V. vaccine last month in Sacramento. His doctor recommended it, he said, “because I’m over 60 and have a somewhat weakened immune system” after a long-ago bout with cancer.They are the exceptions. So far, only about 15 percent of Americans over 60 have received one of the two new R.S.V. shots, which the Food and Drug Administration approved in May and are the first-ever vaccines against the disease. Just 16 percent more said they definitely planned to, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.By contrast, more than 62 percent of adults over 65 have received the recommended flu shot this fall, and a third have gotten the updated Covid-19 vaccine.“It’s a new vaccine, and people are trying to figure out whether they need it or not,” said Dr. Preeti Malani, a geriatrician and infectious disease specialist at University of Michigan Health.That is if they know about the R.S.V. vaccines at all. A national survey this summer of people ages 60 through 80 found that nearly half hadn’t heard about them.The C.D.C. recommends the R.S.V. vaccines for people over 60, after having individual discussions with their health care providers, something called “shared clinical decision-making.” Medicare Part D, Medicaid and most private insurers will cover the entire cost.The fact that older people are vulnerable to R.S.V. is an unfamiliar concept to many people. For decades, the virus was mostly considered a threat to infants and young children. Most physicians, “when they went to medical school, were taught that R.S.V. was a pediatric illness,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “It’s still the leading cause of hospitalization in infants in the U.S.”But the F.D.A. estimates that the virus sends 60,000 to 160,000 people over 65 to hospitals each year and causes 6,000 to 10,000 deaths. Other published estimates are even higher.“It is a very contagious virus,” Dr. Malani said. Though children can become quite ill, more often, “a 4-year-old with a runny nose could have R.S.V. and not become very sick; it looks like a regular cold,” she said. However, she added: “The grandparents could get pneumonia.”Pfizer’s R.S.V. vaccine in production. Only about 15 percent of Americans over 60 have received one of the two new R.S.V. shots.Pfizer, via ReutersThe risk of becoming seriously ill from R.S.V. increases markedly with age. Hospitalization rates rise sharply for those in their 70s and 80s, especially for those with chronic heart and lung diseases like asthma, heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Older adults who have diabetes or liver and kidney disease, or weakened immune systems, also face higher risk. Adults can be infected repeatedly, and there’s no drug that ameliorates the disease, as there is for the flu and Covid-19.A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2005 followed patients over four winters and reported that, among high-risk patients (their average age was 70) with heart failure or pulmonary disease who contracted R.S.V., 16 percent required hospitalization. In another cohort of older patients hospitalized with respiratory symptoms (with an average age of 75) and diagnosed with R.S.V., 15 percent wound up in intensive care.The new R.S.V. vaccines are highly effective. Clinical trials results showed that Arexvy, the shot made by GSK, was 94 percent effective against severe illness in older adults. Pfizer’s shot, called Abrysvo, was 86 percent effective against severe illness.So why haven’t the vaccines caught on more with their intended recipients?One reason: A shared decision-making recommendation from the C.D.C. can depress vaccination rates, Dr. Schaffner said, because “you can’t promote it with quite the intensity and assurance as with a blanket recommendation” — like the one recommending flu shots for everyone over 6 months old.Also, older people now receive multiple public health messages about seasonal vaccinations. “A few years ago, we were all recommending one vaccine each winter — flu,” Dr. Schaffner said. “We haven’t yet organized ourselves to be persuasive in getting people to accept three seasonal vaccines,” for influenza, Covid-19 and now R.S.V. (Getting two or three at the same time is fine, the C.D.C says.)When R. Jessica Jones, 76, who lives in Haiku, Hawaii, texted her doctor about seasonal vaccinations, he replied that she should get the Covid-19 booster and a flu shot, but that getting an R.S.V. vaccine was “optional.”Ms. Jones, surprised, asked why. He told her he thought the data on their safety and efficacy was “limited” (the F.D.A. disagreed), so she skipped getting one.“When providers are confused, patients are also confused,” Dr. Malani, of University of Michigan Health, said. “If we really want uptake in the population that could benefit, we need to provide clear information to doctors and others.”While some health care providers hope to improve the vaccination rate among older Americans, the vaccines’ manufacturers are apparently delighted with the number of people seeking out the shots so soon after shipping them to pharmacies, hospitals and doctors’ offices last summer. The manufacturers are collecting data on the vaccines’ effectiveness and side effects and — a central unanswered question — how often people will need to be revaccinated to maintain protection.“For a new class of vaccines, this is really fantastic,” said Dr. Len Friedland, who directs public health for GSK Vaccines.“There will always be hiccups,” he said. “But in general it’s gone very well, and we’re not hearing that there are access problems for patients.”Dr. Nathaniel Hupert, co-director of the Cornell Institute for Disease and Disaster Preparedness, was more cautious. Fifteen percent is “a lot better than zero,” he said, pointing out that until last summer, there was no prevention available against R.S.V. But, he said, “if you’d like to stamp out R.S.V., that’s not going to happen with this level of coverage.”Other manufacturers have R.S.V. vaccines in development, and older Americans may eventually have greater protection as more pregnant women and babies are immunized, as the C.D.C. recommends. “Kids have the distribution franchise for these respiratory viruses every winter,” Dr. Schaffner, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said.Over time, “we’ll probably see less R.S.V. transmission from kids to their grandparents,” Dr. Hupert said. “But we’re not there yet.”

Some seniors prefer age-restricted communities, while others want intergenerational living. There is little research to show which option is healthier.Kathy Fitts loved her roomy house in suburban Atlanta. But after her children moved out, and the pandemic exacerbated the isolation she often felt as a divorced woman, she left for Latitude Margaritaville, a Jimmy Buffett-themed housing development in Daytona Beach, Fla., for those “55 and better.”Visiting a friend who had relocated there, “I thought, wow, these people are having a good time,” Ms. Fitts, 68, said. She bought a two-bedroom villa and settled in almost two years ago.“I’m loving it,” she said. “There are so many things to do.” Traveling around in her golf cart, she plays bocce and bunco, takes birding walks and goes to tribute band concerts. You probably couldn’t pry her out with a crowbar.Do older people benefit from living exclusively with other older people? That’s the standard model for senior housing of many configurations: independent and assisted living, continuing care retirement communities (also called life plan communities), 55-plus developments, subsidized affordable complexes.But the prospect of life in an age-restricted development makes Robyn Ringler shudder. She and her husband, both retired in upstate New York, downsized from a big house on 30 rural acres to a rented one near an elementary school in suburban Albany.“I love my friends who are the same age as me, but I adore meeting and knowing people of all ages,” said Ms. Ringler, who is 66. She meets people while biking through her neighborhood or walking her goldendoodle; she knows trick-or-treaters by name.“It keeps me more engaged with the world,” she said. “It makes me feel part of a real community, a larger family.” As for the couple’s actual family, their adult daughter, who is about to start a new job, has moved in with them temporarily — something 55-plus communities typically ban.Though surveys repeatedly show that most older people prefer to remain in their own homes as they age, about 800,000 were in assisted living last year, according to LeadingAge, which represents nonprofit aging services providers. An additional 745,000 lived in continuing care communities and three million in federally supported affordable senior housing.The National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care estimates that 540 active adult communities with 82,000 units offer market-rate rental properties for seniors. In other 55-plus developments, residents purchase houses and condos.Age-restricted housing often requires a middle- or upper-middle-class income. Homes at the Margaritaville community in Daytona Beach, for example, start at about $300,000.At Riderwood, a continuing care community in Silver Spring, Md., that Lynn Cave moved into in 2021, the entrance fee for her one bedroom-plus-den apartment was $270,000 (90 percent is refundable after a resident moves out or dies). Her $3,300 monthly fee includes utilities; cable, phone and internet; use of the pool and fitness center; and 30 meals a month.Often, as in Ms. Cave’s case, the sale of a house covers the costs. Low-income seniors have far fewer options.The Jimmy Buffett-themed housing development, Latitude Margaritaville, has drawn many “55 and better” residents.Dustin Miller for The New York Times“There are so many things to do,” Ms. Fitts said of her new home.Dustin Miller for The New York TimesYet research on whether age-segregated housing leads to improved health or quality of life is scant and dated; it’s not a subject that lends itself to controlled studies. “It’s still an open question,” said Jennifer Molinsky, director of the Housing an Aging Society program at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.The motives for relocating vary, of course. Ms. Cave, 67, moved to Riderwood because “I was the daughter who had to take care of parents from afar, and I swore I’d never do that to my kids,” she said.At first, Ms. Cave recalled, “I looked around and saw the walkers and the scooters and thought, ‘My God, what have I done?’” Now, though, she appreciates the community college courses offered on campus, the square dancing and the pickleball, the shared meals. “The people are so interesting,” she added.Such graduated communities allow residents to transfer to assisted living, nursing care or memory care units as their health declines. It’s a benefit that Carol Holmes Alpern, 81, learned to value after she and her husband, Bowen Alpern, moved into Foulkeways, a nonprofit Quaker-affiliated continuing care community in Gwynedd, Pa.A healthy 68-year-old when he arrived in 2021, Mr. Alpern was diagnosed with a brain tumor the following year. When his wife could no longer care for him by herself, he entered hospice care in the Foulkeways nursing center, a short walk from the couple’s apartment. Having the option of 24-hour aides and unlimited visiting hours “probably saved my life,” Ms. Alpern said.Her husband died last month, and now, “I can’t imagine leaving,” she said. Other residents “not only supported both of us, they cherished us.”No such safety net awaits residents of so-called active adult communities, age-restricted developments that can offer rentals or homeownership. But “I see why they’re popular,” Dr. Molinsky said.“They’re lower maintenance than a single-family home,” she said. “They’re more likely to have accessibility features. If the design is thoughtful, with proximity, you have opportunities to socialize. And municipalities are more apt to approve projects that don’t increase school budgets.But Toni Keyes, 65, moved into an apartment in a small 62-plus community in Clearlake, Calif., last year after the single-family homes she had been renting were sold, twice. A retired library worker living on Social Security disability, she found the apartment rent affordable with her federal Section 8 voucher, but the environment unwelcoming and unpleasant.“It’s like a ghost town, always quiet,” said Ms. Keyes, who also remains very conscious of being the only Black tenant. “It feels like a nursing home.“Being surrounded by all seniors is very limiting,” she added. “There should be a mix of age groups.”That’s difficult to find, but “I definitely see growing interest in creating models of intergenerational housing,” Dr. Molinsky said. Some developers and operators have introduced mixed-age programs within senior housing or have built complexes that place senior buildings next to all-age apartments.In Long Island City, N.Y., for instance, the Gotham Organization last year opened an 11-story senior independent living building, part of 1,132 units of housing at rents that range from low to upper income.Though older residents, whose units provide grab bars and other safety features, and younger tenants don’t live side by side, they share a rooftop farm and other amenities and programs that encourage interaction. “They’re in the same ecosystem,” said Bryan Kelly, president of development.Another Gotham development on the Lower East Side of Manhattan will incorporate a Jewish cultural center at the base of the senior building and a large community center in the adjacent all-ages building. “The days of the suburban model, the circular drive-up, are over,” Mr. Kelly said. He expects “more integrated, walkable, active, mixed use” senior housing.Creating intergenerational housing will require federal and local policy changes, said Robyn Stone, senior vice president for research at LeadingAge. “We don’t have the regulatory environment that allows some of these things to happen, or the incentives to encourage and support them,” she said.A few experiments in intergenerational living serve as proof of concept. In Oregon, Bridge Meadows has developed three communities, with more to come, for older adults and for families adopting or fostering children from the foster care system.Treehouse Communities has built a similar combination in Easthampton, Mass. Olmsted Village in Mattapan, a Boston neighborhood, will offer homeownership to middle-income families along with apartments to fostering and adopting families — and to seniors who will mentor them. Some Cohousing communities are seniors-only, but others draw residents of all ages.For now, though, when older people want or need to leave their homes, they usually acquire neighbors who are also, exclusively, older.“I don’t know, if you asked people, if that’s what they want,” said Susan Popkin, a fellow and housing researcher at the Urban Institute. “But we haven’t asked.”

Mentoring programs bring together those just starting to care for family members with dementia and those who have been coping for some time.On Thursday mornings, Julia Sadtler and Debora Dunbar log onto Zoom to talk about caring for their husbands with Alzheimer’s disease, in hourlong conversations that are usually informative, sometimes emotional and always supportive.Both men are patients at Penn Memory Center in Philadelphia, which began this mentorship program for caregivers in September. By design, the two women are at different stages.Dr. Dunbar, a nurse-practitioner who lives in Wallingford, Pa., is younger, at 61, but has coped with caregiving for far longer: Her husband, Jeffrey Draine, 60, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in 2017. “It’s something I’ve developed expertise in,” she said.Philip Sadtler, 80, received his diagnosis just two years ago, so his wife has long lists of questions about what lies ahead. How will she know when Philip should stop driving? How can she handle the guilt of leaving him at home sometimes while she volunteers or sees friends? How long can the couple, who live in Berwyn, Pa., continue traveling to California to visit their daughter and her family?“The sense of being overwhelmed can be crushing,” said Ms. Sadtler, 81, a retired school admissions director. She also participates in a Penn Memory caregiver support group, but felt drawn to the mentorship’s one-on-one nature. “I knew that someone who’s been down this road would be a great help,” she said.“Caregiving in general is hard, but caregiving for a person with dementia is harder,” said Felicia Greenfield, Penn Memory’s executive director. “Caregivers report high rates of anxiety and depression. They have a harder time attending to their own health. Things change socially; their friends don’t understand or come around anymore.”It’s also, she added, a financially draining and physically demanding role, often lasting for years, continuing even if a family member moves into assisted living or a nursing home. The center’s Caring Collective mentorship matches newcomers to the challenge with those who have walked the walk.A new study documents the extent of that burden. Using data from the longitudinal federal Health and Retirement Study, a University of Michigan team compared about 2,400 older adults (average age: 75) who developed dementia during a two-year follow-up with 2,400 others who did not. The researchers matched the groups for health and disability, demographic characteristics, economic status and health care use.“They were very similar people at baseline, so we could demonstrate the impact of dementia,” said HwaJung Choi, a health economist and the lead author. “We were surprised at the huge change over two years.”Debora Dunbar with her husband, Jeffrey Draine, at home in Wallingford, Pa., in 2018. Mr. Draine, 60, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in 2017. “It’s something I’ve developed expertise in,” Ms. Dunbar said.Mark Makela for The New York TimesAt the start, people in both groups received about 12 hours of unpaid care a month from family and friends. After two years, the control group showed little change, but in the group with dementia, “the care hours for family members increased dramatically,” to 45 hours a month, Dr. Choi said.That figure refers only to hands-on help with so-called activities of daily living — bathing, dressing, using the toilet. Taking into account tasks such as shopping, meal preparation and handling finances, unpaid caregivers spent 27 hours assisting the control group each month, compared with 76 hours for the group with dementia.Only about 3 percent of either group used a nursing facility, including rehab stays, at the start; over two years, more than one in five of those with dementia had used or moved into a nursing facility. About 47 percent of the people with dementia had at least one hospital stay, versus 35 percent of those without dementia.Moreover, largely because of the expense of long-term care, those who had developed dementia lost more than 60 percent of their median wealth over a longer eight-year follow-up. “It’s a devastating problem for individuals and families, and also for society in general,” Dr. Choi said.None of that will come as a surprise to families caring for people with dementia.“I remembered how absolutely terrified I was at the beginning,” said Susan Jewett, 76, who first proposed the mentoring idea to Penn Memory after her husband’s death in 2020.Her pitch: “Maybe I could be useful to someone who is earlier in the process.”Mentoring can benefit both parties, said Justin McBride, a senior administrator at Duet: Partners in Health and Aging, which began a similar program in Phoenix in 2016. “We hear all the time that supporting another person in need gives mentors a sense of purpose,” he said. “It helps them make sense of their own journey.”The relatively low cost of such volunteer programs could make them replicable in many locations. They operate on a small scale, however. Duet’s program, which like Penn’s involves screening and training mentors, has about 20 pairs enrolled.It requires a six-month commitment, but most mentoring relationships last a year or two. Penn’s newer Caring Collective, requiring a three-month commitment, has enrolled 20 mentors and 40 mentees.Larger organizations like the Alzheimer’s Association also work to support dementia patients and caregivers. Its free 24/7 helpline responded to 215,000 contacts in the 2023 fiscal year, and its online community called ALZConnected has about 10,000 active members. It conducts more than 27,000 caregiver support groups nationally.Still, support programs aim to keep family caregivers on the job — a job that may simply grow too demanding, especially since many (spouses, in particular) are themselves quite old, with their own health problems and limited ability to afford paid help.“People in government need to hear about what’s going on,” Ms. Greenfield said.A new federal initiative is on the horizon. Medicare plans to fund an eight-year model program called GUIDE, to provide care coordination, education and support; it will include payment for respite services, allowing caregivers a break from their responsibilities.Workplaces can also play a role, especially for adult children who are working while also caring for aging parents. While employers estimate that 35 percent of their workforces are caregivers, the actual proportion is 56 percent, according to a recent Bank of America report.Those workers need policies like leaves of absence, flexible scheduling and counseling. Yet a 2021 report for the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers found that most employers didn’t offer them.Mentoring provides a different kind of support, but one that early participants say has proved uniquely valuable. Mary Perkins, 76, who cares for her husband at their home in Lewes, Del., has been talking regularly with Susan Jewett.Her husband, Wes Perkins, 82, has vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s; at one point, when he required institutionalization for dementia psychosis, his care became particularly difficult. “I was a mess,” Ms. Perkins said. “I needed to talk with someone who understood.”Even more than advice on specific programs and strategies, Ms. Perkins said, she benefited from hearing Ms. Jewett’s own story. “I looked at her face on FaceTime, and I saw hope,” Ms. Perkins said. “I knew she’d gone through hell and she was surviving, even thriving. If she could live through it, I could, too.”Mr. Perkins is back at home now, taking medication to control his symptoms and enrolled in a local PACE program, a comprehensive state and federal effort that provides some paid home care. The couple can take walks together, go out for breakfast, drive to the beach. “We still have good times,” Ms. Perkins said. “It’s better than I ever thought it could be.”At some later date, she plans to become a mentor herself.

Over-the-counter devices have been available for a year now. New research suggests they may have unexpected benefits.A year ago, the Food and Drug Administration announced new regulations allowing the sale of over-the-counter hearing aids and setting standards for their safety and effectiveness.That step — which was supposed to take three years but required five — portended cheaper, high-quality hearing aids that people with mild to moderate hearing loss could buy online or at local pharmacies and big stores.So how’s it going? It’s a mixed picture.Manufacturers and retailers have become serious about making hearing aids more accessible and affordable. Yet the O.T.C. market remains confusing, if not downright chaotic, for the mostly older consumers the new regulations were intended to help.The past year also brought renewed focus on the importance of treating hearing loss, which affects two-thirds of people over age 70. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University published the first randomized clinical trial showing that hearing aids could help reduce the pace of cognitive decline.Some background: In 2020, the influential Lancet Commission on Dementia Prevention, Intervention and Care identified hearing loss as the greatest potentially modifiable risk factor for dementia.Previous studies had demonstrated a link between hearing loss and cognitive decline, said Dr. Frank Lin, an otolaryngologist and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins and lead author of the new research.“What remained unanswered was, If we treat hearing loss, does it actually reduce cognitive loss?” he said. The ACHIEVE study (for Aging and Cognitive Health Evaluation in Elders) showed that, at least for a particular group of older adults, it could.Of nearly 1,000 people ages 70 to 84 with untreated mild to moderate hearing loss, half received hearing assessments from audiologists, were fitted with midpriced hearing aids and were counseled on how to use them for several months. The control group participated in a health education program.Over three years, the study found that hearing-aid use had scant effect on healthy volunteers at low risk of cognitive loss. But among participants who were older and less affluent, hearing aids reduced the rate of cognitive decline by 48 percent, compared with the control group, a difference the researchers deemed “clinically meaningful.”This subset of participants had lower income and “were older, less educated, with higher rates of diabetes and hypertension,” Dr. Lin said. Because such factors are also associated with dementia, “the people at higher risk really stand to benefit the most,” he said.In trying to slow cognitive decline, “with a lot of other therapies and treatments, we learn that they can be too little, too late,” he added. ACHIEVE indicates that “they can still see the benefits later in life.” Another three years of follow-up should reveal any further effects of hearing-aid use on both groups.The researchers also plan to publish findings on how hearing-aid use affects brain atrophy, social isolation, depression and quality of life.Some experts object to emphasizing a connection between dementia and hearing loss, “as though it plants a dementia seed and the hearing aid keeps it from germinating,” said Dr. Jan Blustein, a medical researcher at the N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine.Because of the stigma of dementia, “people who would potentially get treatment for hearing loss may be less likely to,” Dr. Blustein said.She added that enabling greater social interaction, with its known beneficial effects on cognition and mental health, is reason enough to promote hearing-aid use. Researchers at the University of Colorado also recently reported that consistent hearing-aid use by older adults was associated with a lower risk of falls.But acquiring quality hearing aids over the counter, as opposed to more expensive prescription devices through an audiology practice, can still feel challenging.The F.D.A. reviews “self-fitting” hearing aids, the kind users can customize with a smartphone app; it has found eight brands in compliance with regulations since 2022. A small study recently published in JAMA Otolaryngology found that patients who were given a commercially available, self-fitting hearing aid in a clinical trial could, after six weeks, hear as well as patients fitted with the same device by audiologists.But not everyone with hearing loss feels comfortable with online sales and do-it-yourself adjustments via apps. And devices that aren’t self-fitting, and instead use preset controls, don’t undergo F.D.A. review at all.“It’s still Day 1 of the market’s opening,” said Barbara Kelley, executive director of the Hearing Loss Association of America, an advocacy and support group. “The price points are all over. There’s still confusion among consumers.”Adding to that uncertainty, some marketers have resorted to misleading advertising — some claim that their devices restore natural hearing, for instance. No hearing aid can do that.“There are bad actors,” said Kate Carr, president of the Hearing Industries Association, which represents major manufacturers. “One company was advertising ‘C.I.A. technology.’” In response, the F.D.A. published a guide for consumers this year.Still, progress. Self-fitting O.T.C. aids that perform well are now widely available for about $1,000 a pair; prescription hearing aids purchased through audiologists cost several times more.Perhaps because older Americans don’t know about or mistrust the new over-the-counter devices, or because they still find the price a barrier, initial sales appear modest. (Traditional Medicare doesn’t cover hearing aids; Medicare Advantage plans offering hearing benefits still leave patients paying most of the costs.)Lexie Hearing, a major manufacturer, sells self-fitting O.T.C. devices for $799 to $999 a pair online and in 14,000 stores nationwide. According to Seline van der Wat, the chief operating officer, the company is on track to sell 90,000 pairs this year. But Lexie, whose hearing aids are designed and engineered by Bose, is encouraged by its findings that 94 percent of those buyers are first-time purchasers.“We’re finally able to access a part of the market that was previously unpenetrated because of the costs,” she said. The company projects sales of 260,000 pairs next year and a million per year in 2027.Other device makers and distributors are ramping up, too. Best Buy announced that 200 more of its stores began carrying O.T.C. hearing aids this summer, and that number will reach 600 this fall. The global vision company EssilorLuxottica plans to introduce hearing aids embedded in eyeglass earpieces late next year.Several traditional manufacturers have also begun selling over-the-counter devices, sometimes teaming up with better-known consumer companies to promote brand recognition: WS Audiology with Sony, Sonova with Sennheiser. Some experts expect Apple, Sanyo or other consumer-electronics giants to enter the field.To help guide buyers, HearAdvisor — a company founded by two audiologists and a hearing scientist — has built an independent acoustic lab in Rockford, Ill., to evaluate and rank both prescription and O.T.C. hearing aids for those with mild to moderate loss.“We’re trying to be the Good Housekeeping seal of approval for hearing aids,” Andy Sabin, a co-founder, said.After testing about 50 devices to date, HearAdvisor gave its “Expert Choice” award to 13. In general, O.T.C. devices that cost $1,000 or more perform well, Dr. Sabin said, while those sold online today for under $500 “are most often junk.” A few may actually reduce intelligibility.Wirecutter, a division of The New York Times, has also evaluated hearing aids, and the Hearing Loss Association has planned a series of webinars called OTC 101. The first, on Nov. 1, will feature F.D.A. regulators.The United States is the first country to develop a regulated O.T.C. hearing aid market, and “the tech companies and the retailers are still experimenting,” Dr. Lin pointed out. He predicts increased innovation and lower prices ahead.At the moment, though, he said, “it’s still very much a work in progress.”

Benefits extended earlier in the coronavirus pandemic have been rolled back. But many older Americans are not taking advantage of the aid still available.It has never been easy for Mary Cole to support herself and the 19-year-old grandson who lives with her in Bristol, Va., on her monthly $914 Supplemental Security Income check.But it’s getting harder. “I’ve been struggling a lot,” Ms. Cole said.Because benefits counselors at her local agency on aging have helped her apply for several kinds of public assistance, she pays only $158 in rent for her apartment in a subsidized Section 8 building.A federal program helps Ms. Cole, 69, with heating costs. The state underwrites her Medicare premiums, and a Medicare savings program allows her to fill prescriptions for heart disease, hypertension, pulmonary disease and diabetes.But benefits that increased in the early years of the coronavirus pandemic have been rolled back since the federal government ended the public health emergency this year. Ms. Cole’s heating assistance dropped from $900 in 2021 to $600 last year.Her benefits through SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps — had risen to $351 a month; they have since dropped to $140 a month. “That’s not going to feed us both,” she said. She has long since spent the federal stimulus checks mailed out in 2020 and 2021.By the last week of the month, she often runs out of money and considers visiting a nearby food pantry. “I don’t like to do that,” Ms. Cole said. “I figure I’m taking something away from other people.”Poverty among older Americans jumped sharply in 2022, the Census Bureau recently announced. Using the supplemental poverty measure, which economists have found is a more accurate reflection of income and spending than the official poverty rate, the proportion of people over age 65 living in poverty climbed from a modern low of 9.5 percent in 2020 to 10.7 percent in 2021.Last year, the figure reached 14.1 percent, representing more than eight million older Americans.“It’s quite alarming,” said Ramsey Alwin, president and chief executive of the National Council on Aging. “It’s really unacceptable.” Poverty among children also rose steeply, and median household income declined.In southwestern Virginia, where the District Three Governmental Cooperative provides senior services and has helped more than 3,000 low-income residents like Ms. Cole apply for benefits this fiscal year, 20 percent of older residents live in poverty.“We see it going up,” said Debbie Spencer, director of aging and disability services at the cooperative. She described clients “trying to decide if they’re going to eat or buy fuel or buy their medicines.”How poor is poor? The supplemental measure defined poverty last year as an annual income below $15,998 for single adult renters ($22,624 for a two-adult household), with regional variations; the threshold was somewhat lower for homeowners, regardless of whether they had mortgages.Black, Hispanic and Indigenous older Americans have higher poverty rates; so do women and those who aren’t married.The Elder Index, devised by gerontologists at the University of Massachusetts Boston, also calculates how much money older adults need to meet their basic needs. In metropolitan Chicago, for example, a single renter over age 65 in good health required $2,481 per month last year for housing, health care, food, transportation and other expenses, according to the calculator.The same renter in Bristol, Va. — Ms. Cole’s hometown — needed $1,794. Nationally, the average Social Security retirement benefit last year came to $1,792 monthly.“Poverty rates fell in the early years of the pandemic because of the stimulus payments many older adults received,” along with raises in other benefits, said Richard Johnson, an economist at the Urban Institute.As those payments and benefit increases ended, inflation took off, eroding buying power before it began declining.“Social Security has cost-of-living increases, but they come with a lag,” Dr. Johnson said. Monthly inflation peaked in June 2022, but the cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security benefits, a hefty 8.7 percent increase, didn’t factor into beneficiaries’ checks until January.“A lot of seniors live close to the line, so it doesn’t take much to tip them over” into poverty, said Teresa Ghilarducci, an economist at the New School for Social Research. Her studies also show the pandemic’s effect on older workers’ employment; so many retired early or were pushed out that about a million fewer older adults are now in the work force.Even if senior poverty rates were to stabilize or decline next year, eased by the higher benefits some states provide, the figures generally remain stubbornly high compared to those in other industrialized nations with stronger public safety nets.The proportion of older Americans living below the official poverty level fell drastically through the 1960s and 1970s, largely because of expansions and increases in Social Security. But there has since been a plateau.“It’s not fully appreciated how persistent senior poverty has been,” Dr. Johnson said. “The decline really slowed in the 1990s and hasn’t improved significantly since.”Economists and advocates have suggested solutions: raising the minimum Social Security benefit; increasing Social Security payments after people reach age 85, when health care costs typically increase; and improving S.S.I. benefits for older adults and people with disabilities who lack the work history to qualify for Social Security. Those steps would require congressional action.For now, though, enrolling more older people in existing programs could have real impact. Federal benefits go a long way toward reducing poverty. Social Security alone lifted 20 million people over age 65 above the poverty level last year, according to census data. SNAP, housing subsidies and S.S.I. prevented another 1.6 million seniors from sinking into poverty.But only about half of the older people eligible for food stamps have enrolled, meaning five million are missing out, Ms. Alwin said. Considering all public programs, “about $30 billion is left on the table every year that could help with food and medicine and other basic needs,” she said. “It’s eye-popping.”Though most older people recognize that they qualify for Social Security, they’re often less aware of energy and housing assistance, Medicaid and Medicare programs for low-income beneficiaries, state property tax rebates or food stamps. “They may think they’re not for them but for someone else who’s more in need,” Ms. Alwin said.Moreover, applying for these programs can be complicated and time-consuming; some require digital access and skills. Some applicants just give up.“We err on the side of making sure that not one person gets benefits they’re not entitled to, and we sacrifice a lot of people who are eligible,” Dr. Ghilarducci said.The National Council on Aging’s online Benefits Checkup tool shows which public and private programs seniors qualify for; the council also operates a toll-free help line (1-800-794-6559) staffed by benefits experts. With federal and foundation funding, it supports 84 benefit enrollment centers through local aging and family service agencies, senior centers and United Way programs.Though such benefits counselors helped Ms. Cole receive assistance with housing, heating and food, she still doesn’t feel secure, and she relies on another source of support.“God will take care of me,” she said. “I have faith that he will take care of my needs.”