Ken Dychtwald describes himself as “the nation’s foremost visionary and leading authority on the implications of the aging of America.” As should be evident, he does not suffer from shyness. This 50-year-old Californian has been making predictions about this country’s shifting older population for the last 25 years and claims even greater authority now that he has reached life’s midway point himself.
Even a short press conference with this whirlwind of an opinion-former leaves journalists like me with ideas enough for many columns. A sampling of Dychtwald’s opinions expressed at the recent San Diego meeting of the America Society on Aging will serve here to inform readers about important issues and to provoke further thinking. Each set of opinions, incidentally, came in response to a question asked by a journalist.
1) The older workers scene. People past middle age who want to work still expe-rience strong barriers. The presumption that older people cannot and should not be employed dates back to Franklin D. Roosevelt who inadvertently “created a century of age discrimination.” Social Security had the effect of moving older people out of the workplace so that younger people could have jobs.
Once members of the baby boom generation experience the difficulty of getting jobs in middle age, they will lead a revolt against the system. Putting up with the subtle bias of employers will stir them to resentment.
Though, according to Dychtwald, “we have made almost no progress on age dis-crimination,” some signs of change in employer attitudes have appeared. In fact, the space voyage of 77-year-old John Glenn can be called “the watershed event of the last 25 years.”
Elders, for their part, will have to make changes if they wish to be employed. We must be willing to reinvent ourselves. Perhaps we should look on work for its psychic rewards rather than for making a living. As things stand now, older Americans volunteer at the lowest rate of any age group.
2) The long-term care system. This system displays misplaced priorities galore. Instead of putting money into home and community-based care, we have favored institutions, especially nursing homes. But now the federal government is practically fighting a war against nursing homes and no one wants to go into the business because a decent profit cannot be made.
The solution is three-fold: a) organize an all-out push to solve Alzheimer’s disease; b) develop a better home-based system; and c) make elder care a benefit that goes with employment.
If these steps are taken, one can envision a future with very few nursing homes.
3) Intergenerational relations. Relations between the baby boomers and the older generation are currently excellent. Today’s older people are much admired by their juniors because of their achievements in war and peace. However, when the boomers become old, they may not enjoy the same repute from the so-called Generation Xers, people born after 1964 and notoriously self-centered.
Both the current older generation and the boomers are overwhelmingly white. But that will change as the ethnic mix among today’s young comes to the fore. The racial and ethnic dimensions of the population will then become interesting. “How, for example, will a 35-year-old Latino feel about contributing to the support of elders who live in country clubs?” Dychtwald asks.
Questions about longevity will then arise. People with money will be able to buy themselves another 10 to 50 years of life. Will not that increase the tensions between rich and poor?
4) The situation of women. Increasingly, it looks as if American women will be unpartnered and without children. Perhaps that will lead to new and creative life styles. Even now, many older women do not feel content to take on the traditional role of widow, but instead reach out and form friendship networks that invent innovative forms of social life.
Another approach to this question would be an effort to make men live as long as women. “No one seems troubled that men die earlier,” says Dychtwald. But if men were empowered to take better care of their health, he feels, then the overall social situation would improve.
5) End-of-life issues. Of the three options, active euthanasia, passive euthanasia, and suicide, the first seems unlikely to find widespread acceptance. About this option Dychtwald says, “I don’t think we’ll ever be comfortable with it.” But he believes that the latter two options will find increasing acceptance. The baby boomers, accustomed to self-empowerment, will want the right to end their lives when the quality of life has declined irreparably.
This, then, is a sampling of leading-edge opinion about five areas of vital interest to an aging America. Ken Dychtwald may not be right about his views of the issues mentioned here, but he deserves credit for taking them on in such a bold and provocative way. Perhaps the rest of us can pitch in and be heard on these issues ourselves.
Richard Griffin