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No Country for Old People?

The Washington Post, 1/27/08

Abstract:

"The generation that wouldn't trust anyone over 30," says an Allstate Insurance ad pushing the need for retirement savings, "never planned on a 30-year retirement."

True enough. We boomers never imagined 30 years of R&R. But not many of will be able to afford it, either, no matter how hard we save — a reality that's hitting home as housing prices fall and a volatile stock market threatens dramatic declines in 401(k)s. Allstate's presumption of 30-year retirement is already obsolete.

Millions of boomers are headed not for endless vacation but for a new stage of work, driven both by the desire to remain productive and the need to make ends meet over longer life spans. In the next decade, the number of workers over 55 will grow at more than five times the rate of the overall workforce, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projected last month. That could mean the biggest transformation of work and the workforce in the United States since women broke through to new roles decades ago.

But what work will boomers do? How will the largest, healthiest, best-education and longest-living generation in American history spend the second half of their working lives?

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