Each of these first two chapters of boomers’ lives (while allowing for other ethnic, gender, and socio-economic determinants) forms a relatively straightforward narrative that, in many ways, was quite representative of previous generations of Americans. Declaring independence from one’s parents and their respective values in an attempt to create something different actually goes back a couple of centuries in this country, as does the subsequent settling into the domesticity and maturity of midlife.

This is, however, where it gets interesting. Rather than embrace their parents’ model of seniority defined by retirement, baby boomers are now considering or pursuing many different options, a version of life I call Boomers 3.0. Instead of heading en masse to retirement communities much like “Del Boca Vista” (the fictional condominium complex in Florida of Seinfeld fame), 60-somethings are going back to school, starting new relationships, exploring their creativity, taking new spiritual paths, embarking on “encore” careers, forming new communities, fighting for causes in which they believe, giving their time and money away, and yes, bucket listing. For financial and other reasons, a good number are working and staying in their current homes as long as possible, seeing no compelling reason to do otherwise.

Much is being made about how many baby boomers are financially unprepared for retirement, something all too true for a sizable segment of their generation. But boomers are collectively the richest generation in history and, even though a good number have already scaled back their careers, they are getting still richer. The (currently) strong stock market is making affluent boomers wealthier, with those additional financial resources being used to pursue alternative, sometimes very costly third acts.

Sixty-five million (of the original 76 million) in the boomer population are still alive and kicking. They range in age from 53 to 71, and each one is approaching or already engaged in his or her third act. Some baby boomers, unwilling or unable to accept that their bodies and minds have gotten older, are clinging desperately to their remaining youth by investing in the wide array of “anti-aging” therapies to be found in the marketplace. But even most of these folks don’t take these alleged fountains of youth too seriously.

Still other boomers are admittedly lost when it comes to planning for their third act; they are not interested in the traditional model of retirement, but not at all clear on which path they should take. Interestingly, in my research I’ve found that it is the financially secure who are most likely to be directionless, a result perhaps of having too many options available.

What happened to the very pleasant idea of spending one’s third and final act of life enjoying what one had worked so hard and long for during the first and second acts? Why is there no longer a central narrative to Americans’ last quarter-century or so of life (roughly age 55 to 80, on average)—replaced by a postmodern jumble of stories going in all sorts of directions? Are baby boomers, as some observers have claimed, the first “ageless” generation in history, rejecting the rules of society as they famously did in their idealistic younger days? Is creating a new paradigm of aging their final hurrah, something perhaps greater in scope and longer-lasting than their countercultural dream of universal peace and love?

In retrospect, the baby boomers’ impulse to toss out the Greatest Generation’s interpretation of older age makes perfect sense and was entirely predictable. Boomers (the “Me Generation,” remember) were and remain resistant to social norms and expectations, their individualism and anti-authoritarian ways perhaps being their most enduring legacy. It would be easy to suggest that as boomers plunge headfirst into their 70s they are suffering from an acute case of Peter Pan syndrome, refusing to grow up even as their physical selves experience decline and as they more often forget exactly why they came into a room. The looming threat of becoming a victim of Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia is incentive enough to pretend that older age is something that only happens to other people.

Overall, however, I believe that baby boomers’ inclination to take on new challenges and “act young” later in life is a very good thing. Studies show that there is much truth to the cliché, however trite, that one’s age is “just a number” or a “state of mind,” and that one is “only as old as one feels.” (Don’t even get me started on the “70 is the new 50” adage, or other such silly twistings of chronology, not to mention basic biology.) But sitting down to dinner at an “early bird special” to save a couple bucks, or whiling away afternoons playing mahjong, are simply not boomers’ style. (To be fair, retirement communities are a lot more active than they used to be.) Boomers’ third acts of life may indeed be scattered, disjointed, and personally defined, but as a whole they offer an attractive alternative to the going-off-into-the-sunset model that was so popular in the latter half of the 20th century.

Finally, given the widespread ageism in our youth-obsessed society, it’s no surprise that baby boomers will do pretty much anything to avoid being branded as irrelevant and over the hill. It’s also important to note that boomers’ insistence on trying to keep their jobs despite lucrative early retirement offers is actually in the best interests of the country. Millennials may wish boomers would get out of the way so they could take over their prestigious jobs and fat salaries, but millions of 60-somethings delaying Social Security and Medicare payouts is, for the moment at least, averting the economic and healthcare apocalypse (and “generational war” over resources) that many experts are predicting.

Continuing to find meaning and purpose in life is the real goal of Boomers 3.0—a less coherent story than version 1.0 or 2.0, but certainly an intriguing one that will have major social, economic, and political consequences over the next few decades.

The post Why Boomers Need a New Script for Life’s Third Act appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In advance of an April 26 Zócalo/ASU event on the future of our health care system—”Will the Aging of America Bankrupt the Healthcare System?“—we posed that very question to people who think a lot about how the Baby Boom will impact us overall.

The post A Silver Tsunami Is About to Hit U.S. Health Care appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I found myself assigned to interview retirees in New Hampshire as a part of a survey of long-term care facilities. The subjects were Anglo, God-fearing, patriotic men who found it strange for a young disabled Latino to inquire about their personal lives. I later learned that the Brandeis faculty also had qualms about sending me into this uncharted territory. However, after shooting pool with me, these elderly gentlemen invited me for a snowmobile ride (my first-ever). We were soon like good friends, and thus the surveys were completed successfully.

Looking back now, I can see this experience was a prescient microcosm of one of the greatest challenges America faces today: addressing the sometimes conflicting needs of the two fastest growing population segments in the country—the elderly and ethnic minorities. It also shows us how California can lead the way

The U.S. is facing two key milestone years: In 2030, the last of the aging baby boomers all will have turned age 65, and in 2045, we will have become a majority-minority nation. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that in 2044, non-Hispanic whites will drop below 50 percent of the population, and Hispanics—America’s largest racial/ethnic minority—will surpass 25 percent.

These years can be benchmarks by which to measure how we respond to a changing demographic landscape. Between 2015 and 2055, the Latino population will double in size, from 56.8 million to 112.3 million. In the same time period, the number of adults over 65 will have nearly doubled (from 47.8 million to 92.5 million), creating the largest “senior citizen” group in our history. Fifty-seven percent of those individuals will be non-Hispanic white, and 21 percent will be Hispanic.

What does this mean for the future of our country? Will fear and insecurity create racial discrimination and ageism, or will we have the foresight to prepare for, invest in, and embrace this new America?

The current state of our political discourse isn’t promising. Social Security could become a defining issue in the 2016 election. Its solvency hangs over politicians and the public on both sides of the debate. Immigration reform, meanwhile, is stuck in limbo, hampered in part by an undercurrent of nativism. Are we destined to forever have these conflicts, or can we find common cause, accept the reality of the demographic changes, and use them to our advantage? I believe my personal journey, and recent California history, provide insight into the path forward.

My mother, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, raised nine children on her own in Salinas, California. We were fortunate to have the benefits of public housing, a robust social welfare safety net, and of course, a mother with strong values. As a result, all nine of her children are college graduates with professional careers. If there is a message in our personal journey, it is to recognize and accept that America is a nation of immigrants, and the true task will be to adapt to a future, which holds the promise of reconciliation rather than generational and racial conflict.

I saw first-hand how my grandmother (who came with her family to California fleeing the Mexican Revolution) and mother faced discrimination, and now that I am an “elder,” I have seen how the Mexican community here acquired political and economic influence over the past half century. Yet I also see how other parts of the country (particularly New England, the Midwest, and the South) are only now coming to terms with waves of immigrants and facing the discomfort we once had in California.

We faced immense struggles (deportations, riots) in adapting to constant demographic shifts, but over many years, Californians became accustomed to change. California, which became a majority-minority state by 1999, continues to be a harbinger for the nation. Our struggles with propositions 187 (to deny social services to undocumented immigrants) and 209 (to end affirmative action) galvanized undocumented persons to naturalize and vote, giving impetus to a powerful set of Latino and Asian elected officials. California is the world’s seventh largest economy in part because of the interconnections of its immigrant groups. The Korean, Persian, Central American, Mexican, Chinese, and Armenian diasporas in California are second in size only to their home countries. These and other factors can show the nation (and older voters) that notwithstanding unsettling demographic trends, in time, regions can and will benefit from the presence of these groups.

With time, acculturation, and intermarriages, we have reached an equilibrium where a majority of Californians today feel that immigration is good for the state. This gives me hope that, as immigrants assimilate, the rest of America can adjust and adapt to these demographic changes.

Indeed, demographics suggest that America will be forced to adapt. Anglos make up 76 percent of baby boomers, a large proportion of whom will require long-term care assistance, whether in institutional facilities or at home. A rising percentage of their caregivers (currently 27 percent) are minorities and immigrants.

And it’s not just the caregiving where these two groups will have to learn to work with each other: As these same baby boomers sell their homes, who will the buyers be? The aging Anglo population is having fewer children. But will the growing, younger minority populations have the education, jobs, and financial resources to buy those homes?

The United States is aging, but with fertility rates above replacement levels, thanks largely to Latinos and Asian-Americans, many of whom live in California. These groups have been able to acculturate thanks to a civic culture that fosters engagement in our democratic processes. In turn, Latino culture and Asian economic investments enable cities such as Los Angeles to remain viable, and the cultural infusion of foods, new ideas, popular music, and capital investments keep the our country and state vibrant.

We must recognize that all Americans have a common stake and self-interest in our mutual success. As I learned in working with New Hampshire retirees decades ago, by drawing on our personal backgrounds, understanding individual concerns, and appealing to our good sense and compassion, we can forge unlikely bonds with one another.

Now is the time to make this compelling case to the baby boomer generation. I know that my children and grandchildren will grow and age in a nation that is much different than it was in the last century. By embracing and supporting who we have been and who we are becoming, we can be confident that America will continue to prosper and be a beacon for the world.

The post California, Where Brown and Gray America Collide appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

It’s time for millennials to have that tough talk about retirement with boomers. But using logic or making appeals to intergenerational fairness aren’t likely to be successful strategies. And suggesting that it’s time for boomers to shuffle off the stage might seem selfish or cold-hearted to most members of the remarkably well-mannered millennial generation. Nor is any suggestion that boomers retire likely to meet with a positive response from that generation of workaholics. Instead, the talk needs to be couched in the language of boomers and attuned to their fundamental values.

We have written three books on the millennial generation in which we used the theory of generational cycles, first proposed in 1991 by authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, to make our own predictions about America’s political future. Along the way, we studied volumes of research data, and created some of our own, on each of the current generations of Americans and the dynamics of their interactions with each other.

Boomers are an “idealist generation,” to use Strauss’ and Howe’s name for a generational archetype that is focused on deeply held ideological beliefs. Previous American idealist generations–the transcendental generation (born 1792-1821) and the missionary generation (born 1860-1882)–had one key characteristic that is clearly evident in boomer behavior today. All Idealist generations are driven by strong beliefs about what is right and wrong and what is good and evil. Members of this type of generation resist compromise and are determined to impose their beliefs on the rest of society–even if it means tearing down existing institutions.

By contrast, millennials are a “civic generation” in Strauss’ and Howe’s categorization. Their historical predecessors were the GI generation that came of age during the Great Depression and World War II and the Republican generation that won the American Revolution and developed the constitutional order by which America has been governed since 1787. All of these civic generations can be characterized as “pragmatic idealists.” Today’s version, millennials, is interested in working together to make the world better. Millennials’ desire to find mutually agreeable solutions to problems makes having the “talk” with their boomer colleagues so hard.

But there is a way to turn the discussion into the type of “win-win” outcome that millennials favor. The key is to appeal to the very ideals that have driven boomers’ lives ever since they first burst upon onto the nation’s consciousness in the 1960s. Since then, boomers have devoted themselves to their work, regardless of whom or what they chose to fight for during the 20th century’s cultural revolutions. They are the source of the term “workaholic” and take pride in what they accomplish at work each day. They define their very self-worth by their work, leading them to start conversations with new acquaintances by asking, “So what do you do?” To suggest to boomers that it might be time for them to retire is almost the equivalent of asking them to die–clearly not the way to start a productive conversation.

Instead, millennials should begin the conversation by asking boomers about their ideals and values. Get them to talk about what motivated them when they were young to make the life and career choices they did. Most boomers love to talk about their youth. They think of it as the best time in their lives. So starting the conversation in this way is likely to make the opening of the “talk” both pleasant and productive.

The next step would be to pivot from the past into the future by asking boomers what they believe they have yet to accomplish. This should be followed by a suggestion that now might be the time for the boomer to take up the work that remains undone on their ideological bucket list before it is too late and they lose their ability to make a difference. Assure them that there are other people, maybe from Generation X, if not the even younger millennial generation, who can pick up the work in which boomers are now engaged and see it through to completion.

But, crucially, millennials should also make it clear that no one but boomers have the wisdom and experience, coupled with the ideals, to take on the challenges they have been too busy to tackle. At that point, moving out of their jobs–and on to their unfinished business–will become something boomers think they should do, rather than something that is being forced upon them.

The history of previous idealist generations underlines the importance of having these conversations sooner rather than later. Strauss and Howe, in their book Generations, summarize the very different outcomes that resulted from the choices made by members of idealist generations at this crucial point in their lives: “Where the angry spiritualism of Transcendental youth (born 1792-1821) culminated in the apocalypse of the Civil War, the Missionaries (born 1860-1882) demonstrated how a youthful generation of muckrakers, evangelicals, and bomb-throwers could mature into revered and principled elders–wise old men and women capable of leading the young through grave peril to a better world beyond.” Members of this generation, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur, and George C. Marshall successfully mobilized the civic-minded GI generation to undertake and complete the task of remaking the world according to our democratic ideals.

By analogy, suggesting that it’s time for the current generation of idealists, boomers, to lead this increasingly dangerous world to a better place by putting aside their current work and taking on their last and most important challenge, is the best way for millennials to convince boomers it’s time to move on. The current state of affairs makes it clear that it is way past time for millennials to start this difficult conversation. Our advice to millennials: Don’t wait another minute to have the “talk” with a boomer you know.

The post The Right Way to Ask Boomers to Retire appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.