The Baby Boomers may act as though they have a hammerlock on youth, but already some of them are starting to contemplate what`s going to happen early in the new century, when the first of those born after World War II start to retire.
Government planners, demographers, medical experts and sociologists are trying to predict the consequences of the nation`s largest generation moving into old age. They warn about the effects on everything from Social Security taxes on the younger population to health care, income maintenance and housing.
Boomers themselves are asking: Will I have enough money? Will Social Security take care of me? Where will I live? What will medical care be like?
If I jog and eat healthy food and cut out tobacco and alcohol, will I still fall prey to a disease that`s not affected by lifestyle, such as Alzheimer`s?
There already is an informational lobbying group, the American Association of Boomers, modeled on the American Association of Retired Persons. It advises Boomers on everything from retirement planning to political issues affecting them now and in the future, such as the long-term viability of Social Security.
According to the Census Bureau, 77 million Americans were born during the Baby Boom, between 1946 and 1964. The leading edge of that group-those born between 1946 and 1954-includes nearly 34 million people and will begin hitting retirement in less than two decades.
In June the General Accounting Office forecast that between 1990 and 2020, the number of Americans 65 and older will increase from just over 12 percent of the nation`s population to almost 17 percent, while those between the ages of 16 and 64-the work force available to pay taxes to support the elderly-will decrease to 59 percent from 64 percent.
Even now, financial marketers are starting their appeals to Boomers who may be beginning to realize that age 65 isn`t all that far off and they better salt some money away, because Social Security won`t pay for everything.
For example, a current Prudential Securities ad trumpets, ”Perhaps the one thing worse than dying is outliving your money,” and then goes on to advise, ”You`re probably going to live a lot longer than you think. . . . Today, if you reach the age of 55, and you almost certainly will, the odds are that you`ll live until you`re 77. . . . Social Security will only pay for a small fraction of your retirement needs. . . . You can`t let it give you a false sense of security; the current maximum benefit is just $1,088 per month. If you are fortunate enough to have a company pension plan, this can help, too, although on average it will only account for another 16 percent of your needs.”
The answer, of course, the ad claims, is to start consulting now with Prudential.
Indeed, Social Security is already a battleground.
According to Leon Bouvier and Carol De Vita in ”The Baby Boom-Entering Midlife,” a 1991 study published by the Population Reference Bureau, ”The viability and solvency of the Social Security system is one of the most persistent public policy questions debated today. With the proportion of retirees to workers rising, there is concern that society will not be able to meet future Social Security obligations or will place an excessive burden on future taxpayers. In 1990, there were roughly five people of working age (ages 18-64) for every person age 65 or older. By 2030, the ratio will be 3-1. . . . ”At least for now, long-range (75-year) forecasts by Social Security actuaries show the system is financially sound and currently accumulating a large surplus of funds that is intended to finance the Baby Boom`s retirement. But federal budget deficits and rising health-care costs pose significant threats to maintaining the program on its current course. Much of the surplus funds that are currently being accumulated (are) being borrowed by the federal government to offset the national debt. The long-range implications of this policy are still unknown.”
A source close to the House Ways and Means Committee, which originates all tax legislation, defends the government`s borrowing through the sale of Treasury securities.
”What are you going to do with this money?” he asked. ”Put it in a sock so it`s not earning any interest at all? If the money`s going to be invested, there`s no place safer than federal government securities.” For the money not to be paid back, he says, ”the U.S. government would have to go into default-and it`s always paid its debts for the past several hundred years.”
But many Baby Boomers apparently are not so sure. In early September the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, which is an arm of a lobbying group on taxes, released a study showing that 43 percent of those surveyed in the 35-to-44 age group were ”not too confident” that Social Security would continue to provide benefits of equal value to those received by retirees today. Thirty percent were ”not at all confident.” The total means nearly three out of four aging Baby Boomers lack confidence in the system.
At the same time, 87 percent of those surveyed in the same age group say they do not believe most Americans are saving enough for retirement.
Entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, now cost taxpayers $700 billion a year, or half the federal budget. Sixty percent of that total is distributed to Americans 65 and older, regardless of their wealth.
Social Security, which costs taxpayers $300 billion annually, is expected to move ahead of defense next year as the government`s most expensive budget item.
Members of Congress regard Social Security as the most sacrosanct of programs, particularly in light of well-organized elderly voters, and have dubbed it a ”third-rail issue,” meaning if you touch it, you die. Just last year, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) proposed trimming the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 5.2 percent over five years. The Senate rejected it, 60-38.
Like Social Security, health care is a major issue, first for Boomers`
parents and then for themselves. The GAO report released in June says that from 1990 through 2020, expenditures for Social Security and Medicare will soar 185 percent, nearly triple the economy`s expected growth of 66 percent.
”By 2020, $1 out of every $9 spent in the U.S. economy will be for those programs,” the report says.
One of those arguing most vociferously for medical research now to thwart diseases down the road is Dan Perry, 47, executive director of the Alliance for Aging Research, a non-profit, non-partisan Washington health and educational organization that aims to improve life for the growing number of elderly. ”The real beneficiaries of this research are going to be people who are now middle-aged,” Perry says, ”. . . because research takes time as well as money. . . .”
”My own sense is that Baby Boomers as a group are entering middle age at a time when there`s more information out there (than before) on cardiovascular disease. (There have been) dramatic declines in cardiovascular disease. That means a lot of people are going to make it past their 40s and 50s,” a stage that Perry says was once referred to as ”heart attack valley.”
But he notes that some health problems that especially afflict the elderly-Alzheimer`s, osteoporosis, Parkinson`s disease-are not affected by lifestyle. And without current research on cures for them, he warns, ”we`re going to be piling people up at the far end (of life) . . . but . . . without answers to the diseases that (can) make late life miserable.”
If cost-containment plans advocated in think tanks, academia and on Capitol Hill turn out to be a restraint on science and technology that would advance medical understanding, he warns, we could ”find ourselves in 2030 with the same level of understanding as 1992, only the numbers of old people will be much greater. Then we really have a catastrophe.”
One of the consequences, Perry suggests, could be a ”rationing of medical care on the basis of age . . . (maybe) no medical care beyond relief of pain after a certain age. . . . (We could) end up with nursing homes on every block filled to the brim and a lot of painkillers.”
Such a scenario brings to mind former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm`s controversial statement that the terminally ill elderly have a ”duty to die and get out of the way” instead of prolonging life through artifical means.
Perry also worries that there may be too few doctors trained in geriatrics for the future. More doctors may have gone into pediatrics to treat the population surge when Boomers were children, but, Perry reports, there doesn`t seem to be a corresponding increase in geriatric specialists as they age. In fact, he says that only 4 percent of this year`s graduating classes at all U.S. medical schools had taken a class in geriatrics.
Perry attributes this to a variety of reasons: Geriatrics pays less and lacks the glamor associated with other medical specialities; some medical students and doctors don`t like the idea of dealing with patients who are old, have chronic conditions and don`t respond to treatment; and, he says, there are not enough doctors qualified to teach geriatric care.
According to a study released last spring by the alliance, the U.S. has only 4,084 physicians certified in geriatrics-or just 1.3 geriatricians for every 10,000 people age 65 and older. The report estimated that by 2030, when there will be more than 65 million older Americans, the country will need more than 36,000 geriatricians.
But Dr. John Tupper, 72, an internist, ”self-taught geriatrician” and immediate past president of the American Medical Association, says that geriatrics is a ”relatively new phenomenon in American medicine” and ”as doctors age, their practice ages with them. Internists find they are becoming applied geriatricians whether they want to or not.” He says he also sees a trend toward more teaching of geriatrics.
Then there is the question of where all those aging Boomers will live, assuming they are well enough to avoid institutional care. The prediction from many experts, perhaps not surprisingly, is a return to group housing, sort of a grownup version of the communes of the `60s.
Ross Goldstein, 45, a San Francisco psychologist who tracks Boomer trends, says, ”I don`t expect Baby Boomers to go to retirement homes. I expect to see communal homes. As Baby Boomers, we`ve gone to school (in classes) of 40 or 50. We`re more comfortable with the group process than prior generations.”
So already Boomers are talking, sometimes laughingly, of the
”gerioperatives” where they expect to live and the kind of house rules they insist on, such as allowing pets and wine.
Says Marguerite Gluck, 42, of Chicago: ”I think a lot about how I`m going to live when I`m 70 or 80. Both of my parents were in nursing homes at the end, and it was horrible. . . . We`re getting to the age when we think we should be thinking about (old age), but I don`t see us doing much.
”Maybe we think we`re immortal.”
The American Association of Boomers can be reached at 2621 W. Airport Freeway, Suite 101, Irving, Texas 75062.
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Next: Menopause.
