Baby Boomers Envision Their Retirement

Lots of marketers paint a rosy picture of the lifestyle of baby boomers as they enter the retirement years. But authors Moschis and Mathur, basing their findings on 20 years of surveys among baby boomers and their parents, tell it like it is. Many baby boomers have saved little money for retirement; their health is worse than that of their parents; and while both generations say travel is in their futures, many will not have money enough to rent a budget motel a few miles from home. But the picture is not all bleak. Moschis and Mathur use their findings to discuss how people can live longer, more satisfying lives. In addition, they apply those findings to marketing and advertising, advising businesses how to use the attitudes and mindsets of mature consumers to create products and services for them as well as to make those products and services more appealing to older customers.

Fewer than 20% of Baby Boom women will experience a secure retirement. Marriage, education, occupation, home ownership—these variables predict their future. Possession of all four indicates retirement security, and absence of any increases risk of old-age poverty. This riveting sociological study also examines the social relations and structures that will determine the retirement experience, options, and decisions for more than 40 million Baby Boom women. These women's material base and social status are examined through the use of empirical data, and the key predictors of their retirement are identified. The massive entry of Baby Boom women into the labor force increases the importance of retirement planning for working women. It comes at a time when existing research models and data are outdated and inadequate to effectively predict their future retirement experience. Over the past 30 years, American men and their spouses have benefited from the linear, undifferentiated model of the traditional male retirement. For the Baby Boom generation, however, the nature of work has changed significantly. The current retirement model may not serve Baby Boom men as well as in the past, let alone Baby Boom women. In contrast, this book offers a new, dynamic model that considers the social and work structures influencing women's lives and that accurately reflects the predictors and parameters of Baby Boom women's retirement.

Focusing on the Baby Boomer generation, this argument explores how this group is permanently destroying previous attitudes toward aging, retirement, senior citizens, and even the concept of death. An analysis of welfare rates and health-care costs demonstrates that the Boomers are influencing everything from education and employment to housing, health, beauty, and sex. With solid statistical support, this groundbreaking study takes a closer look at new kinds of social relationships as well as new products that can reduce or even eliminate the effects of aging. The topics covered offer a sneak preview of an imminently new societyone in which receiving a gold watch at the age of 65 will simply mean the first half of life is over.

Over the next three decades, the number of Americans over fifty will double, swelling to more than a quarter of the population. Already we are living thirty years longer than a century ago, with further gains expected in the coming years. The end result is a new stage of life, one as long or longer than childhood or middle age in duration, and one spent in unprecedented good health. Yet, as individuals, and as a society, we've shown little imagination or wisdom in using this great gift of a third age. Marc Freedman identifies the new longevity as not a problem to be solved, but an opportunity to be seized-provided we can engage the experience, talent, and idealism of older Americans. At a juncture when the middle-generation faces a time-famine, struggling to simultaneously raise kids and work long hours on the job, the older generation is awash in free time, poised to succeed women as the trustees of civic life in this country. In the process they stand to find new meaning and purpose in their lives, and abandon the limbo-like state unfulfilling for so many older individuals. Freedman argues that the aging phenomenon, the massive transformation that many portray as our downfall, may in fact be our best hope for renewal as a nation.

Summarizes the results of a research on the economic status of the baby boomers and compares their financial prospects with their parents' generation. Presents projections of the income and consumption of the baby boomers at the age of 65.