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The article discusses the challenges and potential solutions for ensuring old age security in the United States and Mexico. It highlights the projected insolvency of Social Security and the need for additional sources of retirement income. The article emphasizes the importance of private retirement plans, personal savings, home equity, and property income in providing economic security in old age. It also addresses the issue of informality in the labor market and its impact on retirement savings. The article concludes by suggesting potential reforms, such as increasing participation in retirement plans, reducing informality, and exploring alternative funding mechanisms. [Extracted from the article]

Context: Mexico. Purpose: Using the health care service utilization model as a framework, this paper will analyze the differences in health care service use among older Mexicans living in urban and rural areas in Mexico. Methods: The Mexican Health and Aging Survey (MHAS) data were used to test the applicability of Andersen's "model of health services" of predisposing (ie, age, sex, etc.), enabling (education, insurance coverage, etc.) and need factors (diabetes, hypertension, etc.) to predict ever being in the hospital and physician visits in the past year by place of residence (urban, rural, semi-rural). Findings: Results showed that older Mexicans living in the most rural areas (populations of 2,500 or fewer) were significantly less likely to have been hospitalized in the previous year and visited the physician less often (P less than 0.0001) than their urban counterparts. The significant difference in hospitalization between rural and urban residing older Mexicans was largely accounted for by having health care coverage. Certain need factors such as diabetes, previous heart attack, hypertension, depression, and functional limitations predicted frequency of physician visits and hospitalization, but they did not explain variations between rural and urban older Mexicans. Conclusions: Not having insurance coverage was associated with a lower likelihood of spending an overnight visit in the hospital and visiting a physician for older Mexicans. This lower utilization may be due to barriers to access rather than better health.

In the United States, a woman's health insurance coverage is largely determined by her employment and marital roles. This research evaluates competing hypotheses regarding how the combination of employment and marital roles shapes insurance coverage among Mexican-origin, non-Hispanic white, and African American women. We use data from the 2004 and 2006 March Supplements to the "Current Population Surveys". Results show that these roles largely substitute for each other among non-Hispanic white and African American women, although marriage generally increases the odds of coverage slightly more than employment among non-Hispanic white women. In contrast, these roles cumulatively increase those odds among Mexican-origin women. Yet neither employment, nor marriage, nor their combination assures their coverage. Married Mexican-origin women are particularly disadvantaged. As women increasingly spend a smaller fraction of their lives in marriage, and as relatively few women are in benefits-rich occupations, stable and equitable coverage may require a universal health insurance system. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

Purpose: We compare the economic consequences of widowhood for preretirement age and early-retirement age Black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic White women. Methods: We use the 1992 and 2000 waves of the Health and Retirement Study to assess the effects of widowhood on the household incomes and assets of non-Hispanic White, Black, and Hispanic women who were 51 years of age or older at baseline (N = 4,544). Results: For women of all racial and ethnic groups, marital disruption, including widowhood, results in a substantial decline in household income and assets. Net of demographic controls, the relative loss is far greater for Black and Hispanic widows than for non-Hispanic White widows. Implications: The data reveal a substantial widowhood penalty for total household income and net worth for women in each racial and ethnic group. However, the findings suggest that minority widows are at a particularly high risk of poverty in late life, given that they have lower incomes and fewer assets to begin with. Implications of the results for the financial security of women approaching retirement are discussed.

Women with few social resources are at elevated risk of partner abuse. Certain evidence suggests that African American and Hispanic women, who are overrepresented in the lower socioeconomic strata, are at particularly high risk. We compare women's risk of partner violence, defined as moderate and severe, among 2,400 low-income African American, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic Whites from Welfare, Children and Families: A Three City Study and find that these groups differ in their risk of degrees of violence. Specific nation-of-origin Hispanic subgroups also manifest important differences in their violence risk profiles. We argue that a better understanding of victimization requires more detailed ethnic categorization and a more refined understanding of the meaning of domestic violence for different groups.