Title III, Older Americans Act

The Department of Health and Human Service's (HHS) Administration on Aging (AOA) uses a procedure for distributing funds under Title III of the Older Americans Act that results in unequal funding per elderly person across states to a much greater degree than would be the result using the statutory formula. For example, using AOA's approach, Arizona's fiscal year 2000 funding per elderly person is 33 percent less than Iowa's, while strict adherence to the statute would result in a 5-percent difference. Under the AOA procedure, most states with above-average growth in number of elderly residents received less funding than called for by the statute. Using the statutory rather than the AOA method would redirect $27 million of title III fiscal year 2000 state allotment funds (3.3 percent) to states that have experienced above-average growth in their elderly populations. GAO suggests that if Congress wants to ensure that priority be given to current data on states' elderly populations in distributing title III funds, it could amend the statute to require that funds be distributed in that way.

GAO noted that: (1) the AOA procedure for distributing title III funds results in unequal funding per elderly person across states to a much greater degree than would be the result using the statutory formula; (2) for example, using AOA's approach, Arizona's fiscal year (FY) 2000 funding per elderly person is 33 percent less than Iowa's, while strict adherence to the statute would result in a 5-percent difference; (3) moreover, under the AOA procedure, most states with above-average growth in number of elderly residents received less funding than called for by the statute; (4) for example, for FY 2000, Florida received $6.8 million less, California, $3.8 million less, Texas, $3.7 million less, and Arizona, $3.2 million less; (5) in total, using the statutory rather than the AOA method would redirect $27 million of Older Americans Act title III FY 2000 state allotment funds (3.3 percent) to states that have experienced above-average growth in their elderly populations; and (6) when GAO first reported on this issue in 1994, the amount that would have been redirected using the statutory method in FY 1993 would have been $17 million (2.2 percent of that year's title III allotments).

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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