Time has come to reassess how we look at aging and retirement
How we got here
The Older Americans Act of 1965 (Pub.L. 89–73), was the first federal level initiative aimed at providing comprehensive services for older adults. It created the National Aging Network comprising the Administration on Aging on the federal level, State Units on Aging at the state level, and Area Agencies on Aging at the local level. The network provides funding—based primarily on the percentage of an area’s population 60 and older—for nutrition and supportive home and community-based services, disease prevention/health promotion services, elder rights programs, the National Family Caregiver Support Program, and the Native American Caregiver Support Program.
These programs, along with Social Security was intended to provide a safety net for all seniors being detached from working society and expected to live out their remaining days. In theory this is an excellent idea full of humanity. Most countries around the world have an aging safety net, the best of which are countries like Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada and Germany In practice the US has revised the 1965 Act 10 times since its inception, last in 2007.
Fifteen years later, a change in evaluation is needed. The previous Ideology was that citizens would work until 65 then die off by 70. With the advance of medicine, nutrition and exercise, not only are people living years beyond 70, they are living decades. It is also expected that this current generation of incoming retirees will live somewhere between 80-100 years. There is a better than 50% chance of it.
Living well and healthy beyond 70 is the norm. There was an adage at the start of the millennium decade which said 60s is the new 50s. This was because of the way nutrition, medicine and exercise change the heath condition of seniors. That is more the case today as then.
The one area that has not been address for the added longevity is how will seniors finance the additional decades of living.
But with pensions fast becoming a relic of the past and real wages flat or falling for decades, millions of older adults have been too strapped to save. According to The New School Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, the median retirement savings for middle-income people 55 to 64 is only $60,000. Financing a long life with meager resources to cover even basic expenses is a national problem that looks only to worsen.
The coming seismic demographic shift will have profound implications for nearly every sector of society. It is already evident in the labor market, where nearly a quarter of the U.S. workforce is currently 55 and older, a cohort projected to increase to one-third in the next decade.
