10 Million Seniors Live in Poverty—Even as They Hold Trillions in Housing Wealth

Older Americans are sitting on enormous amounts of housing wealth. At the same time, poverty among them is rising.About 10 million Americans aged 65 and older lived in poverty in 2025 under the Supplemental Poverty Measure, according to a new AARP Foundation analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. Their poverty rate reached 15.4%—the highest of any age group.The findings clash with a familiar story about aging in America: Older generations have accumulated tremendous wealth, much of it in their homes, and are expected to pass trillions of dollars to their heirs over the coming decades.But those numbers describe very different groups of people, says Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com®.“There are two things at play here,” Berner says. “First, those aggregated wealth numbers skew heavily toward high net worth seniors. Seniors who don't own homes are much more likely to face poverty conditions, so both situations can be true for different subsets of the senior population.”Homeownership itself doesn't necessarily resolve the contradiction, either.“Second, even among homeowning seniors, their housing wealth is illiquid,” Berner says. “It can't pay for groceries or utilities unless...