Special Issue:
Baby Boomers
The Gerontologist
Cite journal as: The Gerontologist Vol. 52, No. 2, 149–152
doi:10.1093/geront/gns038
Editorial
© The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.
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Advance Access publication on March 5, 2012
Not Your Mother’s Old Age: Baby Boomers at
Age 65
Nearly 79 million people now living in the United
States were born between 1946 and 1964 (Haaga,
2002). In 2011, the first of the Baby Boom cohort
reached age 65, and for the next 17 years, close
to 10,000 people a day will celebrate their 65th
birthday. The generation raised according to
Dr. Spock, the generation whose motto once was
“trust no one over 30,” now find themselves knocking at Medicare’s door. Baby Boomers redefined
each stage of life as they experienced it, modifying
fashion design and hair length as well as key societal institutions. They questioned the underlying
values and attitudes of society. They influenced
education, music, race relations, sex roles, and
child rearing. They are about to change what we
know about old age.
The Baby Boom generation is significant for its
size as well as its distinct social and demographic
characteristics. Baby Boomers are more highly
educated, more likely to occupy professional and
managerial positions, and more racially and ethnically diverse than their predecessors (Frey, 2010).
They have higher rates of separation and divorce,
lower rates of marriage, and gave birth to fewer
children (Hughes & O’Rand, 2004). On average,
they are healthier and have longer life expectancies
at age 65 (Freedman, Martin, & Schoeni, 2002;
Manton, 2008). They have had more varied work
histories, longer transitions out of the labor force,
and work for more of their adult years (Quinn,
2010) than previous generations.
Although the popular press has been fascinated
with the aging of the Boomers, scholarly attention
has been more limited. In an effort to further a
multidisciplinary dialogue about Baby Boomers’
aging, we invited authors to contribute original
research papers as well as review papers focused
on the aging of the Baby Boom generation. We
Vol. 52, No. 2, 2012
particularly welcomed papers that were conceptually
based, methodologically sophisticated, and oriented toward policy and practice. We encouraged
scholars to develop papers focused exclusively on
Baby Boomers as well as those contrasting Boomers
with earlier cohorts. We welcomed quantitative,
qualitative, and mixed methods manuscripts that
examined Boomer experiences from a wide variety
of perspectives and disciplines.
A total of 39 manuscripts were submitted.
Manuscript formats included research articles,
brief reports, forums, and policy analyses. Manuscripts covered a wide variety of topics, including
intergenerational relationships, alternative lifestyles,
elder abuse, retirement, politics, substance abuse,
caregiving, and health behaviors, and they examined the diverse experiences of African American
and Hispanic Baby Boomers in the United States as
well as those of Boomers living in China, Canada,
Australia, France, Finland, South Africa, and
Taiwan. More than half of these articles (53.8%)
were sent out for peer review. Of the 21 articles
that were peer reviewed, 38.1% were rejected,
4.8% were withdrawn by the authors, and 57.1%
were accepted.
The 12 articles comprising this Special Issue of
The Gerontologist provide a thought-provoking
view of aging as it is being experienced by members
of the Baby Boom generation. These papers demonstrate the incredible heterogeneity characterizing Baby Boomers, emphasizing the value of a life
course perspective, with its focus on timing,
agency, and interdependence for understanding
Baby Boom experiences. Although all Boomers
were born within an 18-year period, there is
considerable diversity among this cohort. The oldest Boomers, for example, reached the age of
majority during the height of the Vietnam War.
149
Their experiences of the Civil Rights movement,
the sexual and drug revolutions, and the feminist
and gay rights movements were very different from
those of the youngest Boomers who reached the
age of majority during the Reagan years.
The extent of this heterogeneity is eloquently
exemplified by Rosenfeld, Bartlam, and Smith
(2012) who examined the experiences of gay
men aged 25–44 years at the peak of the acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome epidemic (1987–
1996). The social networks of these men were
decimated, and their personal and social lives
altered both during the epidemic and throughout
their life course. The experiences of younger gay men
were very different, especially after the discovery
of antiretroviral treatments in 1996.
Baby Boomers came of age during a period of
U.S. history in which the complexity of family life
increased dramatically (Cherlin, 2010). Marriages
were delayed or forgone, divorce rates climbed to
all-time highs, rates of cohabitation soared, and
out-of-wedlock childbearing became more commonplace. The national portrait by Lin and Brown
(2012) finds that one in three Baby Boomers is
unmarried. Unmarried Boomers face greater economic, health, and social vulnerabilities than married Boomers. Moreover, this paper finds evidence
of significant variation within the group of unmarried Boomers, as divorced Boomers have more economic resources and better health than widowed
and never-married Boomers. Sex differences are
also evident, as people who are widowed are the
most disadvantaged among Boomer women, while
people who never married are most disadvantaged
among Boomer men.
Baby Boomers are diverse with regard to race
and ethnicity. According to the U.S. Census Bureau
(2010), 42% of the population aged 65+ years in
2050 will be members of an ethnic minority group;
the fastest growing group is Hispanics. The paper
by Villa, Wallace, Bagdasaryan, and Aranda
(2012) describes how the racial and ethnic diversity characterizing Baby Boomers impacts health
in later years. Baby Boomers of Mexican origin
do not share the advantages of health, income,
and educational attainment enjoyed by U.S. born
non-Hispanic whites. The health effects regarding
diabetes and obesity are especially dramatic.
Baby Boomers will not be immune from the exigencies of old age. They will develop chronic conditions including hypertension, arthritis, cancer,
and heart disease just as their predecessors did.
What will be different is the dramatic increase in
the numbers of people who will experience these
conditions within a relatively short period of time.
The paper by Li-Korotky (2012) examines the
impact that untreated age-related hearing loss
(presbycusis) can have on patients, family members,
and society as a whole. Strategies for prevention,
identification, amplification, and aural rehabilitation are explored.
While members of the Woodstock generation
set out to distinguish themselves from their predecessors, just how different are they? The paper by
Ryan, Smith, Antonucci, and Jackson (2012)
found striking similarities in the fertility and marital statuses of Baby Boomers and the cohort of
people in the United States born between 1905 and
1921 (Depression and World War II parents
[DWP]) and then used the experiences of people in
this older cohort to model the availability of informal caregivers likely to exist for the Baby Boom
generation. Although the DWP generation was
more similar to the Baby Boomers than was the
generation between the two, the article concludes
that the extent to which the experiences of the
DWP can be extrapolated to predict the availability
of caregivers for the Baby Boom generation is limited, as Boomers have higher levels of education,
longer life expectancies, more women in the workforce, and healthier life experiences, all factors
likely to influence the availability of caregivers. As
such, these authors conclude that it is difficult to
project what the Baby Boomers will experience
based on data from previous cohorts.
Hudson and Gonyea (2012) suggest that political life in old age will be different for Baby Boomers
than it was for either their parents or their grandparents. They examine a transformation of the aged
from “dependent” to “advantaged” and a more
recent transformation to “contender” status. This
latest shift, they explain is reinforced by the perceived characteristics of the Boomers and by the
economic and political circumstances that constrain policy agendas and options. The combination of weakened legitimacy in the face of pressing
needs among many of the Boomers may result in a
fracturing of the longstanding singular political
imagery held by older people. They suggest that
the more affluent Boomers will continue to fight for
their benefits as “contenders,” whereas vulnerable
Boomers may be relegated back to a “dependent”
categorization.
Relationships between Baby Boomers and the
generation that preceded them are poignantly
described in the ethnographic analysis by Roth et al.
150
The Gerontologist
(2012) of the clash between incoming Baby Boomers
and long-term residents of an active adult retirement community. Three themes emerged: (a) social
identity and image matter, (b) significant cultural
and attitudinal differences exist between Boomers
and older residents, and (c) shared age matters less
than shared interests. Their analysis found that
ageism, evident in the retirement community, was
driven primarily by frailty and illness, raising
important questions about whether Baby Boomers
will follow their predecessors and relocate to agerestricted communities and how they will integrate
with the old and very old people that already reside
in these communities.
The endurance of Baby Boom family ties is
exceptional. As indicated by Fingerman, Pillemer,
Silverstein, and Suitor (2012), the longevity of the
relationships that Baby Boomers have with their
parents and siblings is unprecedented. The intense
and long-lived relationships that Boomers have
with their own adult children often put them in the
difficult position of allocating scarce resources up
and down the generational ladder. The paper demonstrates how Baby Boomers navigate complex
intergenerational relationships by citing findings
from three major longitudinal studies of families:
the Within Family Differences Study, the Family
Exchanges Study, and the Longitudinal Study of
Generations.
The Baby Boom generation will witness unprecedented numbers of people who both provide care to
the generation that preceded them and require care
from the generation that will follow (Fingerman et
al., 2012). The question of how Baby Boomers perceive and play their role as caregivers is addressed by
Guberman, Lavoie, Blein, and Olazabal (2012).
This analysis revealed that Baby Boomers refuse to
be confined to embracing the sole identify of caregiver; rather, they work to juggle caregiving, work,
family, and other social commitments and have high
expectations of support from paid service providers.
These findings raise questions about whether and
how the current health care system, developed with
family care as the cornerstone of long-term care, will
adapt to the expectations of the Baby Boom generation. Most troublesome is the finding by Hoffman,
Lee, and Mendez-Luck (2012) that Baby Boom
caregivers had greater odds than non-caregivers of
engaging in negative health behaviors, including
smoking cigarettes and consuming soda and fast
food. As such, this generation of caregivers may be
putting themselves at risk for disability and future
chronic illnesses.
Vol. 52, No. 2, 2012
Retirement decisions, including when and how
to leave the labor force, are often driven by financial realities. Many of the oldest Baby Boomers,
facing retirement in a time of economic uncertainty, find their life-long savings insufficient to
cover their needs; the situation for younger Boomers
is not much more optimistic. The importance of
employer-provided retirement funds is critical for
many. Wright (2012) reports that the proportions of men and women included in employerprovided retirement plans were almost identical
and that predictors of inclusion in such plans
were minority status, employment in a core industry or government position, educational level,
and marital status. These findings identify minority and immigrant workers as disadvantaged and
raise questions about the security of government
retirement plans given the current economic difficulties.
As Boomers think ahead to their retirement
years, many contemplate volunteer roles. The
analysis by Seaman (2012) of Boomer women
found that consideration of volunteering in retirement revolves around analyzing the perceived costs
and benefits, setting specific criteria for involvement, and recognizing the societal impacts of their
refusal to volunteer. She noted that formal volunteering will be for personal, not altruistic reasons,
and on their own terms through direct service
rather than board and committee work or fundraising. Volunteering activities will be meaningful
and done on their own schedule.
To complement these empirical research papers,
we commissioned historian and Boomer Andy
Achenbaum (2012) to write a review essay of three
recently published books about Baby Boomers. Of
the scores of books produced for and about Baby
Boomers in the past few decades, we found these,
produced by an American marketer (Roger Chiocchi’s Baby Boomer Bust? How the Generation of
Promise Became the Generation of Panic. Garden
City, NY: Morgan James Publishing, 2010), a
British politician and thinker (David Willetts’s
The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their
Children’s Future—And Why They Should Give
It Back. London: Atlantic Books, 2011), and an
American political scientist and gerontologist
(Robert B. Hudson’s Boomer Bust? Economic and
Political Issues of the Graying Society, 2 vols.,
Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2009), particularly worthy of attention.
Hopefully, this rich collection of papers will
begin a scholarly dialogue about the aging of the
151
Baby Boomers. The size and heterogeneity of this
group will influence how Boomers age and will
shape our knowledge base. They will make demands
on the services and institutions designed to provide
health care, transportation, and housing to previous cohorts of older people. Everything that we
think we know about the aging process—from the
way in which functional disability develops to the
extent to which families will provide support to
the decisions that people will make about retirement—has the potential to be altered. Robert
Browning said and John Lennon sang, “Grow old
with me, the best is yet to be.” That remains to be
determined.
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Rachel Pruchno, PhD
The Gerontologist