Barbara Brooks is one of nearly half a million workers over 65 who are looking for work. Photo by Ana Johansson for The New York Times.

From health reform to Social Security to the job market, there’s a lot of talk recently about the economic status of Americans over 65.

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times reports that there are more Americans 65 and older in the job market today than at any time in history — 6.6 million compared with 4.1 million in 2001 — and nearly half a million workers 65 and over who want to work but cannot find a job.

The unemployment rate for older Americans — 6.7 percent — is lower than the 9.8 percent rate for the country as a whole. But that rate has doubled in the last two years, and unemployed older workers stay out of work an average of 36.5 weeks, 40 percent longer than for the unemployed in general.

Meanwhile, the Times’ David Leonhardt takes issue with the Obama administration’s decision to send $14 billion — in the form of $250 checks — to current recipients of Social Security.

“Older Americans really have survived the recession better than most,” Leonhardt writes. “Many of them started buying assets years if not decades ago, meaning they were not the main victims of the stock and housing bubbles. They had a cushion. In addition, relatively few of them work in manufacturing or construction, the hardest-hit industries.

“Just consider: The real median income of over-65 households rose 3 percent from 2000 to 2008. For households headed by somebody age 25 to 44, it fell about 7 percent.

“Economic policy, like most everything else, is about making choices. Mr. Obama is choosing the elderly, rich and poor, to be more worthy of $14 billion in government checks than struggling workers or schoolchildren. Republicans have pandered in their own ways, choosing to oppose just about any cut in Medicare and, in effect, to stick your grandchildren with an enormous tax bill.”

And the Times’ Adam Nagourney rounded this all up last month with a piece on the politics of the “age gap.”

“American politics has been defined by gender gaps, racial gaps, geographic gaps and the gap between the religious and the secular,” he wrote. “Now comes the geriatric gap. As the population ages and the nation faces intense battles over rapidly rising health care and retirement costs, American politics seems increasingly divided along generational lines.”

The flash point, of course, is health care, with a CBS News poll shwoing that 51 percent of those over 64 said health care reform would hurt senior citizens, compared with 36 percent of all adults surveyed. Nearly half of those over 64 said they disapproved of Mr. Obama’s job performance, compared with 35 percent over all.

(Of course, the situation is different for those not yet 65 and thus ineligible for Medicare. Ensuring affordable coverage for that group could open the way for a surge of encore career transitions by people who have been concerned about being able to maintain their coverage.)

Nagourney says the issue is not going away. “Mr. Obama has signaled his intention to tackle the long-term financial problems of Social Security, another issue the elderly play an outsize role in, and they tend to be resistant to change there, too.”