The Long Baby Boom: An Optimistic Vision for a Graying Generation

In 2006, the first baby boomers turned 60, unleashing a veritable tidal wave of gloomy punditry, advertising for financial services, and forecasts of impending national bankruptcy. In <I>The Long Baby Boom,</I> Jeff Goldsmith counters the predictions of such "catastropharians" with a far more optimistic scenario.</P><P>Drawing on evidence that most baby boomers plan on working long past age 65, Goldsmith argues that they will have a constructive impact on society over the next twenty years. By assuming a much larger portion of the financial burden of their own retirement and health costs, they will help preserve Social Security and Medicare for the less fortunate and for successive generations.</P><P> <I>The Long Baby Boom</I> is the first comprehensive forecast of baby boomers’ career plans, health trends, and cultural and political values. Goldsmith's pro-work, pro-savings, pro-health social policy emphasizes personal responsibility without ripping the social safety net. Optimistic and innovative, <I>The Long Baby Boom</I> doesn't promise a cloud-free future, but it does reassure us that the sky isn't falling.

<B>Jeff Goldsmith</B> is the President of Health Futures, Inc. and Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is a University of Chicago–trained social scientist who has lectured at leading business schools in the United States, including the University of Chicago and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked for both the governor of Illinois and the dean of medicine at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine as a public policy analyst. For the past twenty-five years, he has served as a strategy consultant both to business and nonprofit enterprises.