Growing old has never been easy. But in isolated, rural spots like this, it is harder still, especially as the battering ram of recession and budget cuts to programs for the elderly sweep through many local and state governments.

Ms. [Norma] Clark has been able to get help since her fall two winters ago because Wyoming, thanks to its energy boom, continues to finance programs for the elderly. But at least 24 states have cut back on such programs, according to a recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research group, and hundreds of millions of dollars in further cuts are on the table next year.

The difficulties are especially pronounced in rural America because, census data shows, the country’s most rapidly aging places are not the ones that people flock to in retirement, but rather the withering, remote places many of them flee. Young people, for decades now, have been an export commodity in towns like Lingle, shipped out for education and jobs, most never to return. The elderly who remain — increasingly isolated and stranded — face an existence that is distinctively harder by virtue, or curse, of geography than life in cities and suburbs. Public transportation is almost unheard of. Medical care is accessible in some places, absent in others, and cellphone service can be unreliable.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Poverty • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

1. Terry Tee wrote: I know that the New York Times is not exactly flavor of the month on this site, but in terms of quality journalism I think it is sometimes superb.  It is especially skilled at putting human faces and stories into accounts of how social and economic changes affect our world.  The London Times, alas, went tabloid under Rupert Murdoch, and the quality of its writing has deteriorated considerably.  On a recent visit to Los Angeles I thought the LA Times positively parochial.  I cannot vouch for ANZ papers, nor for Canada, but I suspect that in what Mark Steyn likes to call the anglosphere, the New York Times is unequalled.  Yes, I do know that its liberal biases are often naked; but even so, the paper contains much that informs and enlightens, in high style. December 10, 6:07 pm | [comment link]

2. Statmann wrote: One of the sadest aspects of growing old in a rural and dying community is the fact that there are no young couples to whom you can sell your house which is often your single largest asset. I recall all too well driving a long distance and seeing all the small dying towns except for the lucky ONE that got the Walmart.  Statmann December 11, 12:56 am | [comment link]

3. magnolia wrote: they don’t make em like this anymore. i will include them in my prayers. December 11, 11:38 am | [comment link]

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