January 3, 2008
U.S. Braces for Baby Boom Retirement Wave

By Dave Maxwell

Those of us in the first vast wave of the US baby boom generation are eligible for retirement in January 2008. That’s just next week. How about that. It will set off a demographic tidal wave with wide-ranging economic, political and social implications.

The first baby born in the “baby boom” is Kathleen Casey-Kirschling of New Jersey. She was born at 12:01 a.m. January 1, 1946, and the nation’s first non-disabled baby boomer able to apply for social security benefits.

An estimated 80 million Americans were born between 1946 and 1964, the years usually associated with the baby boom. It was a generation that led a social revolution in the 1960s and changed the fabric of most facets of society.

Various estimates say the cost for government-funded social security and medical care for the boomers will create a funding gap of between 40 to 76 trillion dollars for the next 75 years, until the year 2083.

In his internet “Boomer” blog, marketing consultant Brent Green says, “America is facing a demographic juggernaut. An unprecedented number will soon be entering into the retirement stage of life. One-third of the population will be over age 50 by 2010. One-in-five will be over 65 by 2010.”

The boomer generation has often been maligned as latte-sipping Yuppies. But that is not right. For the most part, boomers have led or sustained most of the great citizen movements that have advanced American values and freedoms: the environmental movement, the consumer movement, the women’s movement, civil rights movement, also diversity, human rights, and more openness in government. It never has been a generation that came on the scene and did nothing.

Just because boomers can officially apply for social security benefits, nothing says all of them will do so. Some will keep working and wait until later.

Americans aged 50 and over have a collective $1 trillion in disposable income and control 67 percent of the US wealth, according to the over-50 social networking website Eons.

Members of the baby boom generation are big users of technology and the Internet. Studies indicate that two-thirds of those between 50-58 had internet access as of 2004, which was just about the same number as 28-39 year-olds.

Dr. Carol Osborne, a public relations executive who writes a “Boomer Blog,” said the generation appears to be pursuing its dreams rather than dropping out to a quiet retirement. “If we were hippies in the 60s and 70s, yuppies in the 80s and 90, what are we now?” she asks. “At an age where expectations are that our generation pull back, instead of ‘re-tiring’ we are ‘re-upping’ for another tour of duty in life. We are changing careers, finally getting around to taking risks with our dreams, advancing into new psychological and spiritual terrain, not only new to us as individuals, but for society as a whole. We are, in fact, ‘Re-uppies,” she wrote.

Taking into account what is facing North American countries, Europe and Japan face a similar demographic time bomb. However, the US is cushioned some by a more liberal immigration policy and more flexibility in the workforce. Many European countries and Japan have mandatory retirement, which is illegal in the U.S.

Overall, U.S. boomers, whether they do it or not, as of January 2008, are now ready to take what they put in.