California seniors have highest poverty rate, study finds

 Allen Stross of Berkeley started working at age 13. He's been a delivery boy, a sign painter, a Navy sailor and a photographer for the Detroit Free Press. Now, at age 90, he and his wife live on about $21,000 a year. After they pay for rent and medications, they're left with just $416 a month.

Allen Stross - Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle 

"No restaurants. No movies. No new clothes. We look for a lot of freebies," he said. "But I try not to worry about things I can't control, such as the past or the future. My wife's a Buddhist. That helps."

Stross and his wife, a retired art history teacher, are among a growing throng of formerly middle-class Americans who find themselves in poverty as seniors. For about 6.3 million seniors nationwide living below the poverty line, that means eating most meals at free dining rooms, rarely turning up the heat, rationing medications and praying that emergencies never strike.

California, with its high cost of living and health care, leads the nation in the percentage of older adults living in poverty, according to a 2013 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Twenty percent of California adults over age 65 live below the poverty threshold of about $16,000 annually, when taking into account the higher cost of housing and health care.

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California seniors have highest poverty rate, study finds