Demographic Profile of Senior in Wayne County, Michigan

While the Michigan Office of Services to the Aging utilizes, as their poverty component,
persons 60 years and over below 150% of poverty, the standard tabulations for the 2000
Census, unlike previous censuses, did not provide for such a tabulation. Rather, the data
tables as produced only allowed calculations to be made for persons 55 years and over or
65 years and over. Michigan was forced to request, and pay for, a special tabulation. 6
The results of this tabulation are shown in Table 10.
Table 10. Share of State’s 60+ Population Below 150% of Poverty, 1999
Region
Special Tabulation
Total ST Share
Wayne County 64,852 24.5
1-A 42,530 16.1
1-C 22,322 8.4
This calculation resulted in an increase in Region 1-C’s share of the State, relative to the
previous calculation of “less than poverty” (8.4 vs. 8.1 percent), and a large decrease of
4.3 percentage points in Region 1-A’s share, from 20.4 to 16.1 percent. The result was a
four-percentage point decrease, from 28.5 to 24.5 percent, in Wayne County’s share of
the State.
One more assessment of poverty and the elderly is to look at how the number of persons
65 years and over, both in poverty and at less than 150% of poverty, distribute across the
county. Such an analysis provides a picture of need and whether that need is distributed
evenly across the county or concentrated in several areas. Table 11 provides an overall
summary of this distribution.
The first point to be made is that Region 1-A accounts for 71 percent of the poor elderly
(65+ below poverty) and a slightly lower 65 percent of those below 150% of poverty.
This drop in share as one increases the income threshold indicates that Region 1-A’s
elderly tend to be more economically deficient than those in Region 1-C. Detroit, as
would be predicted, leads all other communities in the county and accounts for 65 percent
of the poor elderly of the county (60 percent at the 150% threshold). Region 1-C
provides the next four communities in numbers of persons below 150%, though their
combined share of the total – 14 percent – is less than one quarter that of Detroit. Elderly
poverty is shown to be more geographically concentrated than the general population 65
years and over, as the top 6 cities (Detroit through Highland Park), while containing 62.5
percent of the county’s elderly, house 80 percent of the poor and 76 percent of those
below 150 percent of poverty.
6 The special tabulation only provided counts of total persons 60+ at or below 150% of poverty by region.
While such counts allow us to calculate each region’s share of the State total, as well as the share for
Wayne County by summing Regions 1-A and 1-C, there is not enough information provided to allow for
the calculation of a rate within a particular region – such as the percent of persons 60+ in Region 1-A that
fall below 150% of poverty.
Demographic Summary for Wayne County 8