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The countdown to retirement has many people considering how their options fit with their expections.—Photo by istockphoto.com/AmandaRohde
Boomers
Facing Financial Insecurity and Unfamiliar Futures
By
Stephen J. Baetge
Staff Writer
CProjected
changes in the global environment will lead to a new set of lifestyle
options and a dramatically different future for the boomer generation,
according to a recent project studying that generation’s
ability to adapt to face the challenges confronting them as they
enter retirement.
The project, titled “Boomers: The Next 20 Years, Ecologies of Risk,” focuses
on the latest retirement generation as they deal with longer life spans, the
widest wealth gap in recent history, a global energy shortage, economic changes
and an infrastructure based on digital technology.
The project, developed by the Institute of the Future in conjunction with the
Metlife Mature Market Institute, focuses on those born between 1946 and 1964.
According to the results of the project, boomers will be resourceful and self-reliant,
forming economic, health and social collectives including families of choice
to adapt to the future.
As they age over the next two decades, boomers will not only carry their revolutionary
history with them, but they will extend it into a new playing field. Biology,
the very basis of human life, will be up for grabs as boomers make choices about
physical aging that no previous generation has had to make.
They will weigh these choices in a world fraught with dilemmas, and they may
face growing opposition to entitlements by younger workers who feel burdened
by the seemingly privileged lifestyles of boomers. They will stand divided by
the great gap in wealth within their own ranks.
“With the world focused on the collapse of financial markets, it is especially
important to understand the big picture that boomers face over the coming decades,” stated
Kathi Vian, 10-year forecast director for the Institute for the Future.
“They have crafted complex ecologies of risks and resources throughout
their adulthood, and they may well manage those ecologies with surprising skill
and sometimes surprising innovations as they age,” Vian concluded.
According to the study, boomers are expected to distribute the stress and burden
of managing risk across networks of people, some based on kinship and others
on affinity or interest, according to the project’s findings.
They will also plan more, work longer and become more entrepreneurial. Boomers
are also expected to take part in peer-to-peer networks of people that will perform
some of the financial services that banks and other financial institutions perform
today.
The project used three study phases to predict how boomers will age over the
coming decades.
The first phase mapped boomers’ 20-year horizon, identifying events that
will shape their future. The second phase consisted of interviews with boomers
to understand how they will make different choices as they confront the challenges
of the future.
The final phase, “Ecologies of Risk,” used information from the first
two phases to create focused forecasts of the boomers’ environment. Six
organizations, including major corporations and AARP, were involved in the project.
The predicted changes are said to be dramatic. Emerging patterns
of marriage, remarriage and childbearing, including alternative
family arrangements, will
change the current definition of family. Families will be “chosen,” not
just inherited, as in previous generations.
Boomers will likely use peer care taking and social care matching services
as they cope with the challenge of greater distances between family members
and
greater responsibility for the financial well-being of children and grandchildren — a
factor expected to contribute to slowed personal wealth accumulation.
Boomers will also adapt to their position as the first generation to age in
a truly global economy. They are expected to take advantage of the greater
learning
resources, new ways to collaborate, financial products from around the world
and modern networks of health care.
Socially, boomers will participate in online social networks, virtual retirement
communities and community blogging. They will also face challenges from elder
abuse, anti-boomer backlash and ageist zoning laws.
“A degradation of the environment will bring the boomers risks from new
diseases and fewer sustainable food and energy sources. They will respond through
food and energy collectives, do-it-yourself products and green technology,” said
Vian.
“While they will live longer than previous generations, boomers will suffer
from new chronic diseases and widespread depression from aging, illness and other
concerns. They will manage their health differently with biometrics and online
tools that will challenge privacy but will allow them to share and benefit from
new information found internationally,” she said.
According to the project, an erosion of the trust in institutions will lead
to the creation of new banking/investment vehicles, peer-to-peer loans and
new structures
to manage new capitals.
Boomers will also face lessened financial security as a result of diminished
government and employer safety nets and lower levels of personal savings.
Those associated with the project believe that an open mind is the key to success
for boomers in the future.
“Faced with increasing longevity and the need to have lifetime income,
boomers will likely reset their compasses,” said Sandra Timmermann, Ed.D.,
director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute.
“An adaptive, disciplined and flexible self is the best asset that they
can bring to the future.”
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Metropolitan News Company, Inc.
