Economists have been talking about the "Great Wealth Transfer" for a while now—the idea that baby boomers, collectively, are going to leave boatloads of money to their heirs. But a Washington Post analysis suggests that the transfer is starting to run into a significant problem: The rising cost of aging and long-term care is stripping away the nest eggs many older Americans expected to leave behind, and, in a growing number of cases, emptying them out entirely. The gist of the piece is that the wealthiest of families will be able to weather this, but many middle-class families will not.
"Most Americans—many more than may appreciate it—will have little left to pass onto future generations after depleting assets to pay for long-term care costs," wrote economic policy researcher Jessica Forden in a study published by the Roosevelt Institute. Looking at federal survey data on thousands of people who died between 2006 and 2022, the Post found that the share of people dying with nothing left after paying for care nearly doubled in that period, from 6% to almost 11%, and hit 41% among the poorest fifth.
Those figures likely undercount the real hit, since they don't fully include housing costs in assisted living and nursing homes, where annual bills often run $75,000 to $130,000 or more. With Medicare rarely covering long-term care and few Americans holding private policies, families are selling homes, draining inheritances, and tapping their own savings to care for parents. Many ultimately land on Medicaid—only to face little-known "estate recovery" rules that can claw back a parent's remaining assets, often the family house. Read the full story.
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