Prime Time
How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Freedman (The Kindness of Strangers), founder of Civil Ventures and an adviser to government and private groups on aging, contends that drastic social changes must be made to adjust to the coming demographic shifts in America. Within the next 50 years, based on current life expectancy, the number of people age 65 and older will surpass the number of people under age 18. With people healthier and living longer than ever before, the vision of retirement as leisure time is obsolete. The aging boomer population will be unwilling to accept traditional retirement, according to Freedman. But rather than see the glut of oldsters as a drain on the economy and health care system, as many forecasters do, Freedman sees it as an opportunity. To accommodate these older Americans, Freedman says, there will have to be more educational opportunities as well as flexible job positions. To help achieve these goals, he advocates the development of new institutions such as a Center for Unretirement, to help prepare people for new careers; an Institute for Learning in Retirement; and Experience Corps, to let older workers teach and help others in a variety of fields. While the individual case histories presented by Freedman are interesting and some of his proposals are sound, the book is less concrete nuts-and-bolts proposal and more advocacy for turning what he sees as a new stage in life into a constructive time for both elderly people and society as a whole.
