Posted on 12/08/2008 5:57:05 PM PST by SJackson
If you were born from 1946 through 1964, you are a boomer, a member of the most intriguing population this country has ever known. A new study invites you to look into your future for an in-depth view of how you, and your diverse group of cohorts, are likely to adapt as you grow old.
"Boomers: The Next 20 years, Ecologies of Risk" is the title of a report from the Institute for the Future and the MetLife Mature Market Institute. It predicts some wondrous things as well as presenting some cautionary issues. Overall, it is quite a positive picture.
"Members of the baby boom generation will, as they have in the past, be resourceful and self-reliant as they age, forming economic, health, and social collectives and families of choice to adapt to the future." The report examines how this demographic will confront a longer lifespan, the widest rich/poor gap in recent generations, a global energy shortage, new economic realities, and a Web-based infrastructure.
"Boomers," the report says, "will distribute the stress and burden of managing risk across networks of people, some based on kinship and others on affinity or interest. They will plan more, work longer, and become more entrepreneurial."
Boomers have experienced multiple economic upheavals, periodic recessions, the oil shock and stagflation of the 1970s, the dislocations caused by globalization at the end of the 20th century, and the dot-com boom of the early 2000s.
"Now," says the report, "a confluence of events -- the credit crunch, falling home prices, soaring energy costs, and a weakening dollar -- is creating an even more challenging environment as they move into later life. These risks are not isolated but are interrelated, forming part of an 'ecology of risk.' Fortunately, boomers have amassed personal, social, experiential, economic and even spiritual assets that they can call on as they age. They will use these assets to craft distinctive ecologies of resources to respond to highly individual ecologies of risk."
Some of the likely key elements in boomers' lives in the next two decades include the fact that they face challenges and opportunities their parents never knew. Lifespan management, for instance, examines the critical question of how long boomers will remain healthy and productive. Then there is the personal wealth issue with the latest financial crisis, many boomers having seen declines in their net worth.
It is predicted that boomers may face the real possibility of a collapse of living systems in their lifetimes. Food, energy, and materials may well undergo disruptions as climate changes and water crises become realities.
"Finally," the report says, "the sheer number of boomers promises to stress all systems that touch daily lives, from retirement policies and pensions to health care, Medicare, and other services."
An interesting trait shared by many boomers is that they are still on a quest for success. Many who have encountered setbacks have shown great resilience in rebuilding their lives. "If the economics of aging demands a course change, they will likely reset their compasses."
As a result of their access to and experience with the powerful Web-based infrastructure for information, this generation is capable of creating new systems for everything from health care to politics to new forms of work. The report predicts that their economic and political clout will spur continued innovation in the marketplace, in government, and in civil society as all three sectors respond to the needs of an aging society.
External factors that will shape the boomers' world include the science of aging. Biotechnology is just beginning to have an impact on new approaches to disease prevention and treatment. Already there is a greater awareness that environmental changes are intimately connected to individuals' health status and quality of life. Cognitive fitness is a major focus of today's research that hopefully will provide the answers to extend individual ability to function independently.
How well will this generation live out their next two decades while the world is coming to grips with unprecedented challenges and opportunities? "Boomers: The Next 20 years" concludes, in part, "A blend of equal measures of creativity and control in these boomers drives a focus on crafting their personal worlds -- and expressing themselves through their crafts."
Barbara Quirk is a Madison geriatric nurse practitioner. Tandbquirk@aol.com
Heroes.
BIG men.
:-)
Counting flowers on the wall indeed.
Almost none of that is real Captain Kangaroo never saw action, Lee Marvin was wounded on Saipan, he received a Purple Heart but no Navy Cross, Mr. Rogers never served. When a package is that neatly wrapped always remember to check snopes.
http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/mrrogers.asp
http://www.snopes.com/military/marvin.asp
You’re kidding!!!
ratz!!!
It made me feel so damned GOOD!!!!!!!
“It’s all Dr. Spocks fault, he’s from the greatest generation.”
Don’t get me started on that bunch. The so-called “Greatest Generation” still had a duty to raise the next generation (i.e., Baby Boomers), but instead chose to bask in their glory of victory over our enemies.
Victory is worthless if you dump these losers on our society.
“It made me feel so damned GOOD!!!!!!!”
That is the tip off, when an email is just sooo.. perfect, go to snopes.
By the way there are a lot of errors about movie star military records, I have spent a lot of time trying to pin down Glenn Ford’s questionable history, and for many years I thought that Jimi Hendrix was a paratrooper but in reality he was attached to the 101st Airborne, he wasn’t Airborne himself.
and no, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison were not boomers, they were John McCain’s generation.
My Republican mom is hopefull that Obama’s Public Works Pogram will pull us out of this economic funk “Just like Roosevelt’s did during the Depression”. I remain polite as she is my mom and 40 years my senior while we discuss it a bit. (And she promises me that she didn’t vote for Obama!)
My old man (RIP) on the other hand mentioned a few times that FDR was the worst thing for this nation ever. Now I know why, but as a kid I could never understand my dad’s hatred towards FDR and figured he was just old and didn’t know anything. I wish my dad was around today - but also glad he didn’t have to see Obama get elected.
Sounds like a serious beef agin' half the adult population here. Grounded or something?
I boom.
I’m a ‘52 model.
I caused all of the world’s troubles.
The 1952 earthquake occurred just a couple of days before I was born.
I did it.
Yep...they’ve robbed me blind, are trying to take control of my kids from me, and will soon leave this country defenseless.
Other than that, no issue.
(by the way, aside from the few trolls, I’m not referring to the Freeper portion of that generation)
Well, I don't claim 'em. In fact the original birthdates for boomers were 1944 to 1964 and later they changed it, the whole idea of calling them boomers is because of the baby boom caused by the war and it started while the war was going on, not after it ended. I still think Ayers was born a boomer! As for the guy born in 1915 he is a died in the wool communist, or Bolshevik if you will, born to the Lenin stamp and not a pre-boomer! I stand by the fact that most hippies and 60s and 70s radicals were boomers and not pre-boomers.:)(Pre-boomers are people born from 1936 to 1942, if dems can change facts then I am allowed also.)
I use the census bureau definition of boomer, it is amazing how people just make up their own decision of who is and who isn’t a boomer, to fit their agenda.
You get William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn and the boomers get Sarah Palin.
As far as boomers running the sixties, the oldest boomer in America was 23 at the end of the sixties, the youngest was five.
Yeah they were running the world.
An interesting thing about the boomers is that they volunteered for war and the military, the WWII generation were mostly draftees.
“and will soon leave this country defenseless”
I should have pinged you to post 53, the generation of draftees raised the volunteer generation.
WWII fought by draftees, Vietnam fought by volunteers, cool huh?
What you need to do is lighten up. I was kidding on most of my comments to you. What I didn't say, and I defy you to show where I did, was that I thought boomers were runn9ing anything in the 60s. What I said was that most hippies and anti-war protesters in the 60s and 70s were boomers, and they were.
Most of them were high school age or slightly older, some of them were pre-boomers, most of the pre-boomers radicals were born about 1944 or 1945, but the biggest majority of them were boomers.
1946 to 1960 is 14 years but the protests didn't start until after 1966, which means the boomers born in 1946 were 20, college age, and that is where most protesters and anti-war jerks were in the 60s, in college.
The fact of the matter is lots of boomers didn't want to be drafted, they didn't want to fight and run the chance of being killed, simple as that. They were not running the world then,(and I never said they were) neither were the pre-boomers who chose the route of terrorists or protesters, but they are running this country now and doing a shit job of it.
Lighten up, learn to read between the lines, learn to tell the difference between a joke and serious posting and people like me won't make you look like the a**hat idiot that you are.
You really need to work on that humor thing because it isn’t working for you and telling someone else to lighten up when you are the one calling people names and cusswords, that doesn’t seem too light hearted.
Your putting down the many millions of boomer veterans that enlisted as just wanting to avoid getting killed doesn’t make sense, about 70% of those killed in WWII were draftees, but in Vietnam 70% of the men killed were volunteers.
You are an idiot. You misconstrued everything I said, and put your own meaning on it. Boomers made up the bulk of the hippie and anti-war crowd. Ayers wasn’t a boomer and neither was Dorne, but most of the bomb throwing crowd was. Did they control the states? Nope, and I never said they did. That was about as stupid a statement as I have ever seen from a fellow FReeper. So, stick it in your ear and don’t bother replying, it will do you no good.
It seems that something got under your skin, that statement that you made that Bill Ayers was a boomer in post 30 was a mistake but it shouldn’t cause you all this pain.
The attack on the millions of boomer military volunteers should cause you a little shame however.
“And yeah, many in our parents generation didn’t have to worry about the dissipation of wealth, nor about long lifespans.”
What a load of BS!
Most of my generation are still going strong in their 70s and 80s.
I can name on one hand the number of relatives on both sides of my family that have died (other than in war) under 90 in the last 200 years.
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