New interactive dashboard for Elder Index Demographic Data

Find 2011, 2013 and 2015 data on the percentage, number and demographic characteristics of seniors with incomes below the Elder Index in all 58 California counties using our new, free Elder Index Demographic Data online dashboard.  

The Elder Index is a more accurate measure of how much it costs seniors to live in California than outdated federal poverty level (FPL) guidelines that ignore regional differences in living costs.  

The user-friendly dashboard enables you to quickly find numbers on how many seniors have incomes below the Elder Index, how many are among the hidden poor, and how many the FPL recognizes as being in poverty compared to the Elder Index. You can query, sort and compare data using simple pull-down menus. The resulting visuals include a county-by-county bar chart and a color-coded map of all counties for easy comparison. The information can be downloaded as a PDF or CSV Excel file.  

The new 2015 data includes information for 6 additional family types of senior households for a total of 12 different household arrangements, ranging from a single elder living alone to complex 3-generation households.  

This new dashboard complements the Elder Index Cost of Living dashboard which was released in October 2016.

“This is the most comprehensive online collection of data on the number of California seniors who are economically insecure,” said D. Imelda Padilla-Frausto, Center research scientist. “And this new tool makes it even easier to see how inadequately the FPL captures the number of seniors who are struggling to make ends meet in high-cost states like California.”

Padilla-Frausto spearheaded the effort to make the Elder Index Demographic Data more accessible in collaboration with former California Health Interview Survey Statistician Yueyan Wang.

About the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research
The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR) is one of the nation’s leading health policy research centers and the premier source of health policy information for California. UCLA CHPR improves the public’s health through high quality, objective, and evidence-based research and data that informs effective policymaking. UCLA CHPR is the home of the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) and is part of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. For more information, visit healthpolicy.ucla.edu.