The Long Baby Boom: An Optimistic Vision for a Graying Generation » (New Edition)

Jeff Goldsmith is the President of Health Futures, Inc. and Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is a University of Chicago—trained social scientist who has lectured at leading business schools in the United States, including the University of Chicago and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked for both the governor of Illinois and the dean of medicine at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine as a public policy analyst. For the past twenty-five years, he has served as a strategy consultant both to business and nonprofit enterprises.

In 2006, the first baby boomers turned 60, unleashing a veritable tidal wave of gloomy punditry, advertising for financial services, and forecasts of impending national bankruptcy. In The Long Baby Boom, Jeff Goldsmith counters the predictions of such "catastropharians" with a far more optimistic scenario.

Drawing on evidence that most baby boomers plan on working long past age 65, Goldsmith argues that they will have a constructive impact on society over the next twenty years. By assuming a much larger portion of the financial burden of their own retirement and health costs, they will help preserve Social Security and Medicare for the less fortunate and for successive generations.

The Long Baby Boom is the first comprehensive forecast of baby boomers' career plans, health trends, and cultural and political values. Goldsmith's pro-work, pro-savings, pro-health social policy emphasizes personal responsibility without ripping the social safety net. Optimistic and innovative, The Long Baby Boom doesn't promise a cloud-free future, but it does reassure us that the sky isn't falling.

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     xi
Prologue     1
The Baby Boom: The Self-Involved Glacier     9
The Social Safety Net for Older Americans: The Expensive Legacy of the New Deal     25
Living to Work: Boomers, Retirement, and the Knowledge Economy     43
Healthy Aging: Enabling a Longer, More Active Life     64
Encouraging Work in Late Life: What Can Be Done?     80
Medicare: The Mount Everest of Entitlements     103
Social Security Reform: Grasping the Third Rail     132
What We Need to Do     154
What Baby Boomers Should Do for Themselves     169
Conclusion     178
Notes     185
Index     203