More than half a million Americans are homeless on a given night, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. An annual survey, which is taken on a January night each year, counted 552,830 people homeless or in shelters in the United States in 2018.
Half a million people is a small fraction of the population on any one night. A much larger share of Americans experience homelessness at some point in their life. Among Boomers, the figure is 6.2 percent, according to a study in Demography.
The Demography study analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study—a longitudinal survey of people aged 50 or older, which included a question about homelessness ("Have you ever been homeless or lived in a shelter?") in 2012 and 2014. The researchers calculated the lifetime prevalence of homelessness for people born from 1946 through 1964 (Boomers) as a whole and by race and Hispanic origin...
Percentage of Boomers who have ever been homeless
Total: 6.2%
Blacks: 16.8%
Hispanics: 8.1%
Non-Hispanic Whites: 4.8%
After controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, the difference in the experience of homelessness between Hispanics and non-Hispanic Whites disappears, report the researchers. Not so the difference between Blacks and non-Hispanic Whites. Black Boomers are three times as likely as non-Hispanic White Boomers to have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives, the researchers find.
"Do experiences of homelessness contribute to racial disparities in health?" they ask. "Do health disparities contribute to differences in the prevalence of homelessness? Are the two mutually reinforcing, or do they covary as products of social discrimination or economic inequalities? Future research might aim to better understand these complex pathways."
Source: Demography, Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Prevalence of Homelessness in the United States, Vol. 55, No. 6 ($39.95)
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