Boomers

3 Ways to Market to Baby Boomers: Ageless Marketing, Life-Stage Marketing and Generational Marketing

In the realm of marketing to adults older than 50, vigorous debates arise about how best to construct advertising messages and frame offers in memorable and compelling ways. Pundit opinions fall into three overlapping theoretical camps.

Some are proponents of “Ageless Marketing” as conceived and articulated by my late colleague David Wolfe. Ageless Marketing is “marketing based not on age but on values and universal desires that appeal to people across generational divides. Age-based marketing reduces the reach of brands because of its exclusionary nature. In contrast ageless marketing extends the reach of brands because of its inclusionary focus.”

Some are impassioned about “Life-Stage Marketing,” which understands the consumer from the life-stage they’re experiencing in the present. So, for example, adults between 50 and 60 today have a lot in common such as children in high school or college, the beginning of caregiving for aging parents, accumulation of significant consumer debt, and so forth. Further, stage of life implies psychological priorities. Thus, some argue that middle-age or the “Fall Stage” includes a reduction of material pursuits in favor of accumulating experiences.

And some are committed to “Generational Marketing,” an approach for which I’m a proponent. As I write in my book, Generation Reinvention:

“… a generation implies membership in a unique group, bound by common history, which eventually develops similar values, a sense of shared history, and collective ways of interpreting experiences as the group progresses through the life course.

“One way to describe this phenomenon of generational identification is the concept of cohort effect, which sociologist Karl Mannheim wrote about as ‘the taste, outlook, and spirit characteristic of a period or generation.’ He also referred to the notion of zeitgeist, the idea that a generation has a collectively shared sense of its formative historical period.

“Marketers tap into the cohort effect when they remind consumers of cherished events and experiences from the past and connect these acquired memories with brand identity.”

Some critics deride Generational Marketing as superficial: feckless attempts to connect nostalgic memories with products. Boomers aren’t invested in their formative years, critics argue, they’re looking ahead. Formative experiences are of little contemporary consequence. What’s done is done.

Aside from my assertion that humans always recall nostalgic moments with enduring and emotionally powerful reflections—and therefore these memories can become potent motivational triggers in contemporary marketing communications—sophisticated new consumer research substantiates the affirming power of nostalgia.

Authors of a multi-continent research study, published by the Association for Psychological Science, determined that feelings of loneliness—emotions such as unhappiness, pessimism, self-blame and depression—reduce perceptions of social support. Loneliness can be alleviated by seeking support from social networks. And here’s the surprising psychological insight: nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, increases perceptions of social support. A sense of social connectedness nourishes the soul. Nostalgia functions similar to optimism in maintaining health. Nostalgia, appropriately harnessed, inspires positive feelings, including positive brand associations and affinity. (APS, Vol. 19, #10)

This does not mean that creating an advertising strategy around shared generational experiences is always on target or well-executed. Creative problems begin when brand associations are hackneyed or arbitrary.

Misjudgments sometimes occur when those outside a generational cohort superficially interpret generational experiences. We’ve seen recent ads targeting Boomers that connect brands with peace symbols, classic rock music, and the rebellious spirit of Boomer youth. Once potentially powerful as a creative approach, connecting brands to the spirit of the sixties has been done.

Other marketers create messages where psychic connection between nostalgic memories and a brand have little in common; that is, brand utilities have nothing to do with the creative message.

St. Joseph Aspirin launched a TV ad featuring Ken Osmond, the actor who played Eddie Haskell, cheeky friend of Beaver Cleaver in the hit 1950s sitcom, Leave It to Beaver. Significantly, this is the first situation comedy ever written from a child’s viewpoint, thus elevating potential for nostalgic resonance with the children of that time: Leading-Edge Boomers.

Although this ad deserves acknowledgement for resurrecting an actor who is part of Boomer nostalgia in a fairly big way, we are left wondering what Eddie Haskell has to do with headache pain relief. (Maybe the product is a palliative for the headaches Eddie often caused Beaver’s parents, June and Ward.) But brand connections between Eddie and an OTC analgesic are vague. Even minor copy changes could have strengthened ties between Eddie, the obnoxious neighborhood headache, and a popular aspirin brand of the same time. To the credit of this advertisement’s creators, contemporary Eddie helps re-position the brand for what Boomers need today: cardiovascular health. (A note of caution: Ad critiques rarely consider sales or measured changes in brand awareness/preference generated by a campaign, and these performance measures are, indeed, the bottom line in judging marketing effectiveness.)

A more recent television advertisement aptly demonstrates nuances that successfully connect a car brand with Boomer nostalgia. 

I appreciate this ad because it has several multi-generational, cohort-sensitive qualities, including clever use of nostalgia. This Boomer grandmother teaches her Generation Z grandchild about zip-lining naked in Belize, albeit to the consternation of the child’s Generation X parents, especially her perturbed daughter-in-law. Yet, one instance at a farmer’s market—an insightful moment of awareness by the daughter-in-law as the grandmother acknowledges her ability to talk with cats—conveys the value of generativity: critical teaching and mentoring moments between old and young. After several ironic twists in the ad, careful observers learn that the family had been visiting the area where the 1969 Woodstock Festival took place.

Which generation is this Subaru ad targeting? I suggest two. Boomers have had a longstanding and positive relationship with Subaru, an import that became popular during the oil shortage crises of the 1970s and continues in popularity today as a safe and durable SUV brand. The ad reinforces this relationship by evoking collective nostalgia for magical moments from the Woodstock era, such as meeting a future spouse under a stately tree near the rock music festival. Further, the ad also suggests Subaru’s contemporary relevance and value to members of Generation X as portrayed by the son and daughter-in-law. Themes of vehicle safety and off-road capacity also have been cleverly woven into the ad’s story-line. 

Successful Generational Marketing requires mastery of nuance and meaning. Linkages between a brand and nostalgic meaning must make sense. Further, all formative life experiences of a generation, from early childhood through young adulthood, have potential for development. Boomers possess a rich repertoire of shared experiences beyond those that occurred between 1967 and 1973. Potential nostalgic motivational triggers go way beyond Woodstock.

Based on thirty years of experience marketing to Boomers, I can affirm with my career and portfolio that Generational Marketing succeeds when executed properly. I have created numerous ad campaigns and promotions, dating back to 1981, that performed by generating sales, memberships, donations, inquiries, and leads.

Some argue that Generational Marketing is exclusionary:  marketing messages that appeal to a specific generation exclude members of other generations who might not identify with the message or conclude that the product is not for them.

I say, “Welcome to market segmentation.” Target marketing forces choices about who is most likely to buy a product, their common characteristics, and the most potent ways to evoke an emotional connection, to inspire a brand-consumer relationship. These choices force exclusion. As one of my mentors once instructed, “Brent, always make your easiest sales first.” Some of my successes in advertising and marketing correlate with the degree to which my team was effectively exclusionary.

Further, big brand marketers create and target messages to multiple segments for the same brand. When I handled advertising and sales promotions for McDonald’s in Colorado, we executed campaigns targeting young parents, children, Latinos, African Americans, and older customers. Each of these segmented campaigns involved sophisticated messaging that considered cultural and social nuances of the segment. McDonald’s meant slightly different things to different segments.

As I have written and instructed in my speeches, Boomers, particularly Leading-Edge Boomers (born between 1946 and 1955) have a sturdy sense of generational identification. This is due to two factors.

First, the Leading-Edge grew up during significant cultural and social upheaval. Karl Mannheim and several social science researchers have confirmed that turmoil in youth strengthens generational identification and durability of formative experiences.

Second, Boomers comprise the only generation to have grown up with just three monolithic television networks. No generation older or younger experienced this convergence of technology with youth. Boomers growing up in Alaska and Florida shared many of the same televised moments and thus learned the same cultural and social messages. We watched Eddie Haskell weekly in dominant generational percentages. We either liked or disliked Eddie, but we all recall his shifty character. This isn’t about the past or future; it’s about who we are: the sum-total of our life experiences.

Research conducted by Pew Research Center last year underscores how pervasively Boomers identify with their generational cohort, which also means this generation continues to connect with nostalgic images and metaphors from a tumultuous and transformative youth.

Almost 80 percent of Boomers identify with their generational label (and the experiences and values associated with the label), compared with just 18 percent of the Silent Generation and 40 percent of Millennials. As I've insisted for more than a decade of writing and speaking, Boomers are uniquely bound by their formative years and social history and in greater proportions than any other living generation.

Nevertheless, as a marketer, I’ve always maintained a full toolbox. The three Boomer marketing approaches discussed here can succeed when well executed. All three approaches can fail when creators have inadequate understanding of the market, message, methodology or meaning conveyed through their ads.

Ageless Marketing can inspire advertising messages that appeal across generational divides because of commonly shared values, such as the nearly universal desire for a cleaner environment. Boomers and their Millennial children share passion almost equally for greener living and sustainability.

Life-stage Marketing can offer another path to success for those who connect a product or service with a stage need. Many Boomers today need help in understanding their caregiving challenges and responsibilities. This hallmark of their current life-stage predisposes them to offers of caregiving support and education.

And Generational Marketing can create powerful associations between a brand and a segment’s formative experiences. These nostalgic associations can become instant shorthand for positioning a contemporary brand constrained by cluttered media and product/service parity. Nostalgia is rich with opportunities for deeply personal brand interactions.

Those who insist that Generational Marketing is the least effective way to create advertising targeting Boomers may simply not understand this approach at a level of expertise necessary to be successful.

The Peace Sign, Martin Luther King, and the True Significance of April 4th

If you would conduct a worldwide opinion survey to discover one wish for the future of humanity shared across societies and cultures, chances are that universal yearning would be for peace.

A world without war and strife, without sectarian violence, without the omnipresent threat of terrorism, certainly these are among our most cherished but unrequited dreams.

Boomers attached themselves to an idealistic quest for world peace early in their adult lives.

Some demonstrated for peace. Some molded lifestyles eschewing violence, whether through nonviolent civil disobedience or conscientious objection to military service. Some sought to influence national war policies through political engagement. Some joined the military to fight for long-term peace. Some joined the military as clergy or nurses.

The yearning for peace became a theme of many rock and folk songs, with these lyrics among the noteworthy:

Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

— Pete Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

For this generation, peace became a preoccupation.

One icon subsumed their hopes for a better future: the Peace Sign. This graphic image tapped into a collective set of values emerging during a generation's youth, from anti-authoritarian attitudes to youthful thoughts of a more Utopian society. To some it took on inspirational import about moral values similar to symbols of the world's great religions.

With its growing emotional and motivational subtext, the peace symbol eventually became a useful selling tool as businesses refined modern marketing techniques to create a Boomer revolution in product sales. Advertisers quickly recognized the strategic value of co-opting the symbol for product positioning. So-called "head shops" filled initial Boomer-consumer demand by offering peace symbols as stained glass sun catchers, silver necklaces, refrigerator magnets, T-shirts and posters. Eventually so did K-Mart and Walmart.

On April 4, 2018, the peace symbol turns 60.

The story about how it has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the Boomer generation is significant.

In the spring of 1958, Gerald Holtom, a textile designer and graphic artist from Great Britain, set out to create a mark that could be used at protest events pressing for nuclear disarmament. In perhaps one of the most inspired days of identity design during the 20th century, the artist brought together semaphore symbols for N and D, surrounded by a circle representing the globe.  

On April 4th, five-thousand people gathered at Trafalgar Square in London to support the Ban the Bomb movement and to protest testing and stockpiling of fissionable materials by the world's largest industrial powers. It was on this day that Holtom's memorable icon made its debut.

Protesters walked a few miles from the square to Aldermaston, location of an atomic weapons research facility. Their placards carried the succinct message of protest in this new and undefined symbol. Yet it needed no explanation, whether viewers understood the symbolic implications or not. Reactions were not always positive; some saw Lucifer in the logo.

The peace symbol quickly spread to other protest movements representing opposition to the Vietnam War, the quest for civil rights, a growing outcry against environmental degradation, and spirited marches for gender and sexual equality. The symbol persisted through Vietnam and onward into the debates about two wars in Iraq.

The peace symbol even emerged during a nationwide protest inspired by today's youth, called March for Our Lives.

Hundreds of thousands of young and old gathered in cities across the nation to assert their impassioned pleas for stricter gun control laws. They also honored seventeen students and faculty members massacred February 14, 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. 

The peace symbol received overdue commemoration in a book published in April 2008 by the National Geographic Society, PEACE: The Biography of a Symbol. Author Ken Kolsbun observed that the symbol "continues to exert almost hypnotic appeal. It's become a rallying cry for almost any group working for social change."

Ironically, April 4, 2018 is also the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

This callous slaying represents the severest liabilities of peaceful efforts to further social and political progress.

A pivotal figure in the American civil rights movement, Dr. King personified one facet of a grassroots peace movement with nonviolent protest marches, speeches and rallies. And the symbol marched with him through Selma and Montgomery, Washington D.C. and New York, and finally to his destiny with a bullet in Memphis, allegedly fired by James Earl Ray.

April 4, 2018 is a good day for pause: to contemplate a symbol and how near or far Western society is from achieving the dream of peace. And it is a day to recall one of the most revered leaders in the history of the nation: how he knowingly sacrificed his life in pursuit of some noble ideals represented by a symbol.

 

Where have all the flowers gone? by Pete Seeger, covered by Kingston Trio

Boomers Are Ready and Willing to Engage Churches in a New Ministry Movement

Churches have had declining attendance for several decades, and today only 20% of Americans attend weekly services. Between 4,000 and 7,000 churches close their doors yearly.

Can churches turn this around?

In my keynote address at a national conference for leaders of The United Methodist Church, appropriately called Boomerstock, I emphasized novel generational strategies, coupled with intelligent branding and marketing tactics.

My recommendations boil down to two fundamental marketing principles: 1) understand the target market — in this case Baby Boomers — through nuanced psychological and sociological insights; and 2) develop the product and evolve branding to satisfy market needs, including current religious, spiritual and socioemotional motivations.

Boomers, as they are today, must become the renewed priority of churches. Dr. Steve McSwain, religious thought leader and communications professor at the University of Kentucky, stressed this demographic priority in his Huffington Post article:

America is aging. Go into almost any traditional, mainline church in America, observe the attendees and you’ll quickly see a disproportionate number of gray-headed folks in comparison to all the others. According to Pew Research, every day for the next 16 years, 10,000 new baby boomers will enter retirement. If you cannot see where this is headed, my friend, there is not much you can see.

I would modify Dr. McSwain's conclusions slightly: every day 10,000+ Boomers reach age 65, or traditional retirement age. They do not all retire. Many continue working beyond the traditional retirement age. However, with aging comes renewed interest in deeper existential questions and fundamental religious concerns. Erik Erikson's notion of generativity prevails. Searching for spiritual answers is becoming part of the generational zeitgeist once again, somewhat reminiscent of the spiritual and religious movements of the 1960's and 1970's. The explosive growth of mega-churches showcasing contemporary worship themes is partly testament to this trend.

Boomers today have the money and latent motivations to revitalize churches throughout the nation. This opportunity is awaiting enlightened church leadership ready to envision and co-create religious institutions for the 21st century.  

Here are a few excerpts from my speech:

 

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Baby Boomers' Woodstock in 1969 Is A Public Dream Of National Unity So Needed In 2017

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair has been described as a watershed, seminal, formative, game changing, and with dozens of superlatives. Those who’ve attempted to contain the Baby Boomer generation in a tidy sociological package have pointed at Woodstock in summary, sometimes with derision for the Bacchanalian overtones this word can represent.

Scheduled over three days on a dairy farm in New York from August 15 to 17, 1969,Woodstock means little until you place it in larger context of a society unraveling around the newest generation of young adults, a dominant and dominating cohort of malcontents. From their parents’ generation they had absorbed rich idealism for time-honored principles of social and economic justice.

From the world they were inheriting, they had discovered unbearable discontinuities and hypocrisies. From romanticized western archetypes, the first generation to grow up with television had learned to stare down orthodoxy.

Woodstock was just one major event with national impact that blasted through 1969. The final year of the tumultuous sixties included discordant Richard Milhous Nixon succeeding Lyndon Baines Johnson as 37th president of the United States. US troops stationed in Vietnam crested at 543,000.

Three hundred students stormed and occupied Harvard University’s administration building in a spellbinding demonstration of street theater. Charles Manson’s LSD-crazed cult executed actress Sharon Tate and seven others, including Tate’s unborn child. And this was all before a turbulent autumn featuring the largest peaceful protest in US history on October 15, the first Vietnam War Moratorium. And that’s not even close to half of it.

Woodstock was not merely a rock concert showcasing some of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands of the sixties. It was an interlude arriving in the context of more social and political upheaval than most Americans had witnessed. It was a chaotic but peaceful prelude to forthcoming breakdown between government and governed when combined will would end an unpopular war.

Denver gave a nod to Woodstock six weeks beforehand, from June 27 to June 29 at Mile High Stadium. A three-day concert featured forthcoming Woodstock headliners including Joe Cocker, Credence Clearwater Revival, Johnny Winter, and Jimi Hendrix.

The Mile High City also served as a major waypoint where hitchhiking and ride-sharing hippies passed through in droves on their way to a chimerical instant city plopped in the middle of Max Yasgur’s dairy farm.

I did not attend the concert although, like many of my peers, I gave the odyssey passing consideration. When “Butch” Barger asked me if I wanted to drive across country with him to upstate New York, I barely had a clue what he was talking about. Prospects for this road trip sounded interesting but indefinite.

In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t go because mud and unsanitary conditions would not have enlivened me even at 19. I’m better suited to experiencing Woodstock cinematically from a home theater, shower and comfy bed nearby.

To become embroiled in the turmoil and idealism this festival represented did not require attendance. Political upheaval, disintegrating racial relations, burgeoning feminism, environmental degradation, and rock ‘n’ roll culture enveloped a generation, inundating us, forging strident collective mentalities.

From Alaska to Colorado to New York, young people crossed the country for peace and love in a time of rage and resentment. They wanted to do the right thing, and to them this meant standing firm against received authority. Woodstock at once represented the improbable and the possible: just three spins of the globe, three short days — an interruption of business-as-usual that persists even in this new century.

I saw remnants of Woodstock as young protesters clamored along downtown Denver's 16th Street Mall during the Democratic National Convention in August 2008, their faces lit up with passion and high purposes. I felt reassuring presence of shared citizenship in Civic Center Park in October of that same year when more than 100,000 gathered peacefully to hear words of hope from their next president, improbably an African-American man.

I saw the teenagers of Woodstock with wizened faces filling Red Rocks Amphitheater for the 40th anniversary of sixties’ super-group Jethro Tull.

I think of Woodstock-era uproar when watching media reports of roiling public protests against new health care legislation. Or in the faces of impassioned young protesters confronting the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

The 48th anniversary of Woodstock is virtually meaningless if nothing meaningful survives. But when we peer through those throngs of tie-dyed t-shirts and tribal costumes into the present, we see an extraordinarily different America four decades later: arguably, a better America, but nevertheless still beset by division and divisiveness.

The Boomer Generation Journey of "The Case for Christ"

This is not a blog about religion, nor is it a political blog. Rather, Boomers blog has maintained a clear generational focus since its inauguration in June 2005. Sometimes religion and politics have generational implications, and this is specifically true for a new movie released ten days before the 2017 Easter Sunday and entitled The Case for Christ.

This odyssey follows the real-life story of Lee Strobel, a Boomer born in 1952. Receiving a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and then a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School, Strobel began his professional career as a newspaper reporter, notably for The Chicago Tribune, where he achieved award-winning recognition from UPI for his incisive reporting.

An avowed atheist, Strobel's hardened beliefs become severely tested by his wife, Leslie. After a series of family challenges, Leslie, an agnostic, aims her struggling faith at Christianity for solace and hope. Strobel cannot accept such a transformation, feeling threatened by his wife's conversion as if a cult-like wedge driving them apart.

The journalist sets out to ply his investigative reporting skills and debunk Christianity. He focuses on the most significant myth of the religion: resurrection of Jesus Christ. By disproving Christ's resurrection from Roman crucifixion and death, Strobel believes the entire religion will cave as if a house of cards. He can then rescue his wife from brainwashing and restore the equilibrium of their otherwise compatible marriage.

Strobel travels the nation to meet with and interview thirteen evangelical Christian experts covering history, anatomy, religious studies, psychology, philosophy, and cultural anthropology. Each resurrection-defying theory he attempts to prove meets countervailing evidence; each theological linchpin becomes more persuasive and captivating. When confronted with the totality of evidence presented by so many convincing experts, Strobel's emotional resistance collapses, and he also converts to Christianity.

His epiphany launches a new career, in his words "to share the evidence that supports the truth and claims of Christianity," eventually leading to his bestselling book and movie by the same title. Brian Bird, a professional screenwriter, has given Strobel's movie adaptation its Hollywood flair, with a gripping narrative pace, engaging plot twists, and satisfying story resolution.

I became aware of this movie the same day it was released for a special showing. The news came to me through a video promotion and e-newsletter developed by Marc Middleton and Bill Shafer, co-founders of a positive aging and wellness media company called Growing Bolder.

Even with such short notice, my wife, Becky, and I attended the first screening of the movie that also included a live Q&A with Strobel, his wife, and the movie's lead cast members and principal filmmakers. Paradoxically, we watched the movie in the same theater made infamous and haunting by the 2012 Aurora slayings where twelve innocent moviegoers had been massacred and 50 others injured. Although we had the choice of two other alternative theaters for this special event, the Century 16 seemed a fitting context for cinematic redemption.

My views of cultural and artistic phenomena ultimately become filtered through the lens of generational sociology. After twenty years of serious research and study of this generation, I also believe that our shared formative years are prologue to the present and prescriptive for the future. Whether Lee Strobel knows this consciously or not, his faith origin story reflects and refines the narrative of his generation. Thus, I noticed several aspects of this movie with broader generational implications.

Give Me A Head with Hair

Young Lee sported shoulder-length hair, which made him appear revolutionary and iconoclastic in the context of the straight-laced people he encounters throughout the movie. With his "freak flag" planted in a busy, all-business newsroom, his appearance reminded me of an investigative reporting duo showcased in the movie All The Presidents Men, starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. This universally acclaimed political thriller follows two obstinate young journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post. Playing Carl Bernstein, Hoffman also parades shoulder-length hair, defiant and nonconforming. 

Complicated Father-Son Relationships

Young Baby Boomer men had complex and sometimes vitriolic relationships with their Greatest Generation fathers. Much of this divisiveness centered on the Vietnam War, when the men who fought nobly in World War II often felt their sons should embrace the Pax Americana moral imperatives of another offensive war. The two generations parted company on other core values, including women's liberation, racial integration, and gay rights. Boomer men often thought of their laconic fathers as insensitive and rigid, unwilling or unable to show genuine affection. Lee's angry relationship with his father portrayed this larger generational narrative. It was only after Walter Strobel's sudden death that Lee discovers how much his father loved and respected an unforgiving son. This breakdown in communication between men of these different generations has been magnificently captured through a popular song by Mike + The Mechanics and entitled The Living Years.

Carry On Wayward Son

Set in 1979 and 1980, the movie showcases some historical popular culture. One song stands out from the cinematic background: Carry On Wayward Son, created and performed by progressive rock super-group Kansas for their 1976 album Leftoverture. In 1977, the song crested at number eleven on the US Billboard Hot 100. Then Carry On Wayward Son became the second-most-played track on US classic rock radio stations in 1995 and number one in 1997.

What's ironic and not widely known is that two of the founding band members became evangelical Christians around the same time as Lee Strobel's conversion. Kerry Livgren, who wrote most of the band's hit songs, and Dave Hope, who performed as the band's bass guitar player, shared profound born again Christian experiences during their strenuous years as part of a stadium-filling rock band. Today, Livgren creates Christian music with his ultimate achievement an opus entitled Cantata: The Resurrection of Lazarus, an epic orchestral and vocal composition based on a Biblical story told in John, Chapter 11. Hope has served in the clergy for Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida. Today he is a retired Anglican priest.

Power of Generational Aphorisms

High school classmates Kerry Livgren, Kansas songwriter and co-founder, and Brent

Many Boomers remember with clarity a romantic drama film written by Erich Segal and released to theaters in 1970. Love Story conveys a heartrending fictional romance between two Ivy League college students: Oliver Barrett IV, played by Ryan O'Neal, and Jennifer "Jenny" Cavalleri, played by Ali MacGraw. Similar to Lee and Leslie Strobel's story, the protagonists of Love Story confront severe challenges to their marriage from external forces. For the Strobel's, the aphorism distilling their unity in the face of disunity is "You and only you." For the troubled couple in Love Story, one memorable line stands out as Oliver's final statement to his insensitive father: "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Boomers were raised on marketing and cultural aphorisms, and in many ways their generational story can be unfurled with a succession of pithy statements accumulating across five decades.

The Boomer generation is at a crossroads today. Many are reconsidering their spiritual beliefs, and some are rediscovering their childhood religious values. An expanding cohort falls into a religious netherworld described with an acronym SBNR: Spiritual But Not Religious.

This perennially soul-searching generation is reemerging around a zeitgeist today characterized by grand-parenting, generativity, and grief. Because of their advancing age and oncoming "sunset lifestage," many are facing increasing losses, bereavement, and core values reassessment. This is also why I have written Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at A Time of Loss. This book conveys my own search for the sources of grace.

The timing for The Case for Christ could not be better. I'm sure the creative community that has shaped this movie hopes and even expects some spiritual wayfarers will rediscover their Christian faith. At the very least, more will become inspired to ask difficult questions about the hereafter, probing for satisfying answers, much in the same way that Lee Strobel did in 1979 and 1980, the beginning of his productive career investigating and reporting on life's greatest mysteries.

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A Relentless Sense of Generational Identification Inspires Boomers to Change Aging and Dying

Back in June 2000, I grabbed the newest issue of TIME magazine from an airport newsstand. One of the articles teased on the cover had an arresting title: "Twilight of the Boomers."

The generation at that point ranged in age from 36 to 54. Twilight? Really?

Boomers were then in the peak years of middle age, hardly time for a twilight. I kept reading to discover one disparaging assertion after another.

Daniel Okrent, the author, had written a jeremiad insisting that Boomers had nothing left to anticipate but a teeth-chattering downhill thrill ride. In a baby buggy. To oblivion.

Seventeen years later, the aging of the Boomer generation continues to inspire critics, cynics, and doomsayers as acknowledged by a continuing parade of media articles brimming with disaster forecasts.

The oldest Boomers began reaching the eighth decade of life in 2016, so it is fitting to forecast another decline -- "a continuing lament"-- as they trade off independence for assisted care, nursing homes, hospice, and death. Sucks to be us, Boomers.

Alternatively, let's reconsider the meaning of aging through a generational lens to reveal what really is new and transformative about Boomer aging.

Durability of Generational Values

Karl Mannheim, a founding father of the field of sociology, conceived the essence of generational theory through a seminal 1923 essay entitled "The Problem of Generations." Mannheim insisted that when a youth cohort faces substantial turmoil during its formative years between ages 12 and 25, a sense of generational identification strengthens.

The leading-edge of the Boomer generation came of age between 1964 and 1975, an intense era of social, political, and technological changes. Protest marches, lifestyle experimentation, and social role reinvention became hallmarks of Boomer youth, a movement full of fervor, fun, and fantastical ideas about reorganizing society and culture.

Even before I became fully aware of Mannheim's theories, and as I was finishing the first draft of Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers in 2002, I was convinced that Baby Boomers had substantial generational affinity influenced by extraordinary turmoil during our youth. But I had no quantitative evidence, other than the insights I have gained since 1978 from creating myriad advertising and promotional campaigns targeting Boomers.  

That is, until recently.

The Pew Research Center conducted a national survey from March 10 through April 15, 2015. Researchers studied 3,147 adults who are part of their American Trends Panel, "a nationally representative sample of randomly selected U.S. adults surveyed online and by mail."

Pew's study concluded that Baby Boomers have the most pervasive sense of generational identification when compared with four other living generations: The Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation, Generation X, and Millennials or Generation Y. Pew concluded: "Fully 79% of those born between 1946 and 1964, the widely used age range of this generation, identify as Boomers. That is by far the strongest identification with a generational name of any cohort."

Not only do the majority of Boomers identify with their generational label, 70 percent also feel that their assigned generational label applies to them "very well (31 percent) or fairly well (39 percent)."

Research evidence suggests that values formed during external conflicts and cultural turmoil do not perish with time passing; rather, the sociological phenomena typical of Boomer youth are finding newer ways of manifestation as the generation ages.

Just as I reacted with disgust when reading Daniel Okrent's TIME magazine article informing me that I had reached the twilight of my life at age 51, outspoken Boomers today forcefully challenge the language and images of ageism.

Challenging the Meaning of Aging

Jenny Sasser, co-author of one of the leading college textbooks on aging, is addressing discontinuities between classic precepts of her field and realities of a generation captured with an aphorism: "Be the change you seek."

The author declares in her "Gero-punk Manifesto" some uplifting sensibilities about gerontology:

"to be a true punk of any sort is to live experimentally, to live in love with emergence, with the unexpected, the chaotic, the improvisatory, to live with your arms wide open to complexity, guided by your own star, fueled by a good measure of playfulness and well-intentioned rebellion."

A spirited attitude permeates her challenges to worn-out intellectual constructs about aging. Sasser foretells a revolution in thoughts and actions associated with the field of gerontology. She also believes that Boomers will change social and cultural conceptions of aging while rebutting stereotypical dismissals by critics.

Boomers will not rattle downhill in baby buggies, horrified by the physical and psycho-social limitations imposed by aging. They will not forget that spark of youth when everything was possible, inspiring them now toward innovative strategies addressing what it means to grow old.

There is a payoff for the rest of society: This generation will provoke reinvention of the industries that have traditionally served society’s oldest adults, creating trillions in added economic value.

For U.S. Baby Boomers Today, Iceland Has An Authentic Allure Reminiscent of Europe in the 1970s.

Back in 1969 over half-a-million Baby Boomers traveled to Europe, sometimes for extended expeditions through exotic cultures and other times in search of new identities. That was the beginning of a tidal wave of Boomers traveling to Europe that grew throughout the 1970s.

I predict that Boomers, especially Americans, will now travel in accelerating numbers to and through a mystifying land of fire and ice. The next chapter of the generation’s zeitgeist includes Iceland as a leading travel attraction.

Here’s why:  

We are standing on a viewing platform four stories above Oskjuhlid hill, beholding a 360-degree panoramic view of Reykjavik, Iceland. Called The Pearl, this popular attraction consists of a glass dome resting on five mammoth tanks where the city stores natural hot water for heating the tightly woven community of 118,000 residents.

To the southeast I see the sun just reaching apogee perhaps 20 degrees above the horizon even though it is noon on a mid-October day.

Across the bay of Faxaflói to the northwest, I see Snæfellsjökull, a 700,000 year old stratovolcano with a glacier covering its summit. Commanding the tip of Snæfellsnes Peninsula 75 miles directly across this bay, the ancient volcano towers above the landscape, stoic and mildly threatening though it last erupted in 200 AD. This view connects me with Jules Verne who in 1864 employed Iceland’s most famous landmark as the entry passageway to begin his “A Journey to the Center of the Earth.”

Within The Pearl’s massive glass dome and casual café, we have eaten our fill of Iceland’s traditional meat soup, a lamb stew brimming with rutabagas and carrots to add bright flavor and color. Having been fueled by this robust lunch, a small harbor city with a big persona awaits our further exploration throughout the afternoon.

Ahead of us will come adventurous days traveling to geysers, waterfalls, lava flows, glaciers and quaint agricultural communities.

We will tour the Hellisheiði Geothermal Plant situated above an active volcanic ridge in southwest Iceland, which produces 303 megawatts of electricity and 133 megawatts of thermal energy. Eighty percent of Iceland’s energy comes from geothermal sources—a striking example of how non-polluting geothermal energy is being harnessed in a sustainable manner.

On the aforementioned Snæfellsnes Peninsula, we will trek along a hiking trail above black lava beaches connecting Hellnar and Arnarstapi, stopping to linger over a steaming bowl of fish stew at a small cottage tucked in a cove above jagged lava cliffs. The young Iceland woman who prepares our lunch from the day’s catch is typically friendly, fluent in English and most welcoming.

Iceland is a land of powerful contrasts:  between modern and primitive, high-tech and high-touch, natural landscapes and inspired human engineering—between a distinctly idiosyncratic Nordic tongue and the universal language of the hippest rock music today. Iceland is wild spaces softened by gentle, rugged people fiercely proud of their island’s heritage. It is technically a European country geographically isolated from all the hubbub of the mainland to the east.

Now Iceland calls to a generation.

Boomers will go to Iceland because McDonald’s failed there, unable to muster profitable retail support from a country proud of its slow food traditions. Boomers will set out to sample rich espresso coffees where Starbuck’s has yet to gain a foothold.

 

Many will take an odyssey more than a vacation because Iceland asks for introspection and engagement: to consider the toughness of a Scandinavian people who have quietly built a modern nation, unbowed by economic hardships from the Great Recession; and then to touch lava flows of antiquity and smell sulfurous air misting up from bubbling cauldrons of super-heated water.

They will set out because one of their generation’s musical heroes lived and died for peace, and his most cherished value has been enshrined by Yoko Ono on the island of Videy, a short ferry ride from Reykjavik. John Lennon’s wife and spiritual partner annually ignites her artistic tribute—Imagine Peace Tower—piercing the night sky from October 9th (John Lennon’s birth date) to December 8th (the date of his assassination in 1980).

They will visit other chapters of their shared 20th century history when, for example, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev held a summit that eventually resulted in the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. They will discover the mental battleground where two strategic titans clashed for international domination: the 1972 victory by world chess champion Bobby Fischer over Boris Spassky at the height of the Cold War.

Boomers will go there because Iceland lures the adventurous and peripatetic with the ultimate rock ‘n’ roll road trip: a circumnavigation of the island on Highway 1, a lava asphalt byway also known as Ring Road, all 830 miles of it. This adventure through time and geology will tap into their quixotic and youthful feelings about the American west that many first discovered on western television shows and movies from the 1950’s.

Along this circuitous highway they will pass through landscapes similar to Nevada’s dry and barren red-rock expanses; California’s magical central coast, punctuated by Edward Weston’s towering cliffs hanging over Big Sur’s splashing waves; Alaska’s white capped mountains and blue-ice glaciers; and, Yellowstone’s bubbling mud pots and furious spewing geysers.

 

Boomers will be lured to Iceland in some ways similar to how so many once were compelled to visit Europe during the countercultural psychodramas of the 1960s and 70s. They will come in search of adventure, ephemera and meaning and maybe a couple of all-nighters in Reykjavik’s harbor bars that finish late-late happy hours near midnight to launch the main drinking events, sometimes coinciding with the northern lights, the mother of all natural hallucinations.

They will soak their hangovers in The Blue Lagoon, a man-made public bath carved from lava and filled with iridescent, milky-blue waters. Here Icelanders have demonstrated great creativity and technical know-how by generating power geothermally then recapturing that steam as soothing bathwater. In this otherworldly place, Boomers can soak away the stresses of their hectic lives while exploring steam caves, saunas and hot pots, and smearing their age-creased faces with gray silica, a natural product reputed for its skin restorative promises.

Speaking with Líney Inga Arnórsdóttir, the North American marketing manager for Promote Island and Inspired by Iceland, I learned that Iceland’s tourism leaders comprehend the vast visitor potential that will soon arrive from North America. 

She nodded when I shared my observations about the volume of post-50 travelers that I had just encountered during our own guided and unguided adventures. Tourism is the third most valuable industry, exceeded only by fishing and industrial manufacturing. Attracting more travelers won’t be their greatest challenge; accommodating them will be, especially along the Ring Road’s most secluded outposts. High tourist season, from June through August, stretches the limits of a country that has not been included on many “bucket lists”—until now.

Thus, for those Boomers who are also looking into investments that can integrate core values with personal fulfillment, this mysterious land where the aurora borealis dances across the night sky is in need of sustainable and creative accommodations and everything that comes with the growth of a nation’s visitor industry. Opportunities to profit from adventure travel, eco-tourism, heritage tourism and cultural tourism await the entrepreneurs of this generation.

Thanks to the creative work of Líney Arnórsdóttir and her team, here’s another way of perceiving the possibilities of Iceland, post-50:

Inspired by Iceland from MaddMultimedia.com on Vimeo.

All photography in this blog post copyright 2016, Brent Green & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Baby Boomers, the Future of Social Insurance and the Transformation Narrative - Part 3

Editor's Note: I am publishing a multi-part series focused on Baby Boomers and social insurance, the frequently maligned and misunderstood federal entitlement programs. This series delineates arguments, pro and con, concerning the fiscal impact of population aging and social insurance. Can we expect secure and sustainable Social Security and Medicare programs? Can our children and grandchildren? Please bookmark this blog and return periodically for subsequent installments. Weigh in with your opinions in the comments section. If you haven't already, I recommend that you read Part 1 and Part 2 in the series first.

Arguments of Entitlement Critics

Entitlements are fiscally untenable.

In four words, this is an essential argument of anti-entitlementism. The nation is currently experiencing unprecedented deficits, contributing to an existing U.S. public debt of nearly $9 trillion. Looking ahead about 40 years, anti-entitlement critics predict that unfunded entitlement promises, plus the nation’s other debts through annual deficit spending, could place this nation over $211 trillion in the red.

Social Security surpluses end in 2017 when the cost of the program exceeds payroll deductions for FICA. Medicare is already costing more than payroll deductions can counterbalance. Pete Peterson and Dave Walker estimate that each American’s share of the federal debt burden is $175,000.

Generational Inequity

Further, critics see the larger issue to be one of intergenerational inequity. In other words, when today’s entitlement qualifying generations, particularly Baby Booomers, create so much future debt with their entitlement spending, this is simply unconscionable. A generation of unbridled spenders will leave the nation’s youth with unmanageable and unprecedented debts, in effect requiring their children and grandchildrento pay for their fiscal abuses. Ultimately, this will lead to a much diminished standard of living for today’s youth later in their adult lives, with fewer chances to enjoy rich and rewarding dreams. They’ll be spending their earnings to pay the bills of older generations.

One message not being directly communicated through anti-entitlementism is underlying perceptions of aging and the elderly. To critics, old age appears to mean dependency, taking rather than producing.

“The truly living young will be outnumbered, isolated, and besieged by the living undead,” writes Kotlikoff and Burns.

Their targeted messages to the nation’s youth can have the effect of fomenting intergenerational divisiveness and antipathy. Critics are hardly subtle about communicating this as part of their overt agenda, believing that children and grandchildren, duly informed and inspired, can strike with psychic vengeance and lay upon their elders the mother of all guilt trips.

Arguments Against Entitlement Critics

Economic Crisis Revisited

A key argument presented by entitlement critics is the unprecedented nature of the funding crisis. An economic crisis of this magnitude has never happened before. No generation has handed younger generations such a financial disaster.

Richard Lamm, former three-time Governor of Colorado, former president of Americans for Generational Equity, and author of The Brave New World of Health Care, frames his moral argument this way:

“I inherited from my parents’ generation a small federal debt and the world’s largest creditor nation. I am leaving our children a staggering federal debt and the world’s largest debtor nation. I inherited a nation that produced more than it consumed, and I’m leaving my kids a nation that consumes more than it produces.”

While it is true that each new chapter in history is different from any that came before, this is not the first time that an elder generation has presented younger generations with enormous economic challenges.

The Lost Generation (b. 1882 through 1899) put the roar in the Roaring Twenties and included iconoclastic notables such as Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, T. S. Elliot, Louis Armstrong, Mae West, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner.

This generation also handed their children, the GI Generation (b. 1900 through 1924), an economic disaster called The Great Depression. Although severe economic depression was a loadstone on all citizens, the young men and women of that time (including my parents) suffered the most with rampant unemployment and daily struggles to make ends meet. Then they fought a war and after winning they inculcated the most successful economic expansion in the 20th century.

Boomer Generation Penalties

Entitlement critics fail to look at the impact their proposals may have on today’s Baby Boomers as this generation begins to qualify for annuity and healthcare benefits. Due to a history of generational overcrowding, plus two decades of corporate downsizing and corporations exporting well-paying jobs overseas, somewhere between one-third and one-half of this generation is inadequately prepared for retirement. According to articles in TIME magazine and elsewhere, around 25 million Boomers have net assets of $10,000 or less. Yet, many in this economically disadvantaged group have been paying Social Security and Medicare taxes with every paycheck for somewhere between 25 and 40 years.

So, what is the equity in this: possibility of benefits being severely curtailed just as those who are still working begin to consider retirement, and many of whom will desperately need financial assistance to survive retirement?

Entitlement critics often suggest that retirees and those near retirement will not experience any penalties upon restructuring of entitlement programs. So, what is near retirement? One person might have been born in 1949 and his full entitlement benefits grandfather into a new program. Another might have been born in 1954, and she would lose benefits due to elimination of future accruals.

Risks of One-Dimensional Thinking

Generational accounting tends to be one-dimensional: it’s about the numbers. Accountants look at past taxation, productivity, and consumption patterns, coupled with demographics, to develop their scenarios. It’s by no means an exact science, but entitlement critics present their foreboding numbers as if “the gospel.”

For example, on page 97 of his book, The Coming Generational Storm, author Laurence Kotlikoff explains how uncertainty interacts with their economic scenarios:

“So current decisions depend on future outcomes, but future outcomes depend on current decisions. The only way to solve this problem is to solve for both current decisions and future outcomes simultaneously — hence the term simultaneity problem. In practice, the solution begins by simple guessing future outcomes. These guesses are then used to determine current decisions.

“Next, the current decisions are used to update the guesses of future outcomes, which are then used to generate a new set of current decisions, new updates of future outcomes, and on and on until the model has converged. Convergence here means that the procedure has found a set of current decisions that generate the same future outcomes as had been guessed on the previous round and that were used to determine the current decisions.”

In other language, dire prognostications being proposed in the movie I.O.U.S.A and elsewhere are based, just as Kotlikoff suggests, on guesses. They might be intelligent guesses, they might be guesses based on sophisticated computer modeling, with convergence of current public policy decisions and future anticipated outcomes, but they are nevertheless, guesses.

Period.

Whether they like the connotation or not, generational accountants are soothsayers. They base their predictions on perceptions of a future that may or may not happen as many as 40 years from now.

How much reliance should we place on their assumptions?

Look at this way: Show me a generational accountant or economist that, in writing, successfully predicted two of the most significant business and technological changes in the 20th century just ten years before these transformations. Show me someone predicting economic disaster in the mid-21st century who in 1975 also predicted how microcomputers would transform everything in business by 1985. Show me a generational accounting expert who in 1985 predicted advent and adoption of the internet in 1995.

Looking over our shoulders today, we can see many historical precursors harkening forthcoming societal transformations around desktop computers and distributed digital networks, including their concomitant economic transformations. If anti-entitlement soothsayers could not predict these major changes ten years before they happened, how reliable can they be at predicting the future 30 or 40 years from now?

For example, what possible future transformations in genetics, robotics, information technologies, and nanotechnologies have they not considered? How do they predict changes introduced by a generation committed to staying engaged in economic activities across the lifespan?

Soothsayers read crystal balls. They want us to believe they peer into a future that nobody can truly see. They substantiate their predictions by analyzing the past and projecting today’s demographics into the future. As Marc Freedman, author of Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Last Half of Life observes: “This is scenario planning in the rearview mirror.”

Frankly, actuarial predictions do not show much sociological imagination about how Boomers can transform the future.

Working Longer vs. Job Discrimination

Several national studies by AARP, MetLife, and other organizations corroborate that over 70 percent of the Boomer generation intend to keep being productive after the traditional time of retirement. Even if half of this percentage actually continues working into their late sixties and early seventies, this will go a long way in addressing deficits.

Another economic and demographic force is the nation’s need for career extension because of an under-trained younger workforce. According to John McMennamin, a former Fortune 500 corporate senior manager and expert on workforce aging, 20 percent of the current workforce is trained for 60 percent of the jobs now demanding highly trained knowledge workers. Yet McMennamin observes that only 15 percent of corporations are currently taking steps to address an aging workforce. According to Marc Freedman, the nation will soon need about 630,000 senior executives to run the nation’s non-profit organizations. Where is the experience to fill these gaping needs?

Clearly there is a mismatch between a generation’s willingness to continue working and a business community not entirely set on welcoming “wisdom workers” into the human resources fold. Ageist attitudes sometimes run deep in corporations and organizations. Yet, if more citizens work beyond the traditional age of retirement, they continue contributing to entitlement programs longer, thereby reducing future claims. A recent study by the Urban Institute supports these views.

“If Boomers work longer, the economy could produce more goods and services, boosting living standards for workers and generating additional tax revenue to fund promised benefits for retirees and other government programs. Many surveys find that Boomers plan to work longer than recent retirees, but their opportunities will be limited if employers are unwilling to hire or retain them.”

Boomers' fairly widespread desire to remain engaged in the workforce does face obstacles:

“Older workers who do lose their jobs, however, experience longer unemployment spells than their younger counterparts. In 2006, 28 percent of unemployed adults ages 55 to 64 were unemployed for at least 27 weeks, compared with just 26 percent of those ages 25 to 34 and 20 percent of those ages 35 to 44 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007).

“They argue that an increase in global labor supply, which U.S. firms can cap through outsourcing or immigration, will more than make up for any slowdown in the domestic labor force (Cappeli 2005; Freeman 2007). The emergence of China, India, and nations from the former Soviet Union in the world economy may have doubled the supply of workers worldwide. If the expected shortage in prime-age workers does not materialize, employers may face fewer incentives to turn to older workers.

“The substantial increase in the share of the workforce over age 55 in the coming years could lead to a glut of older workers despite the overall labor force slowdown (Sapozhnikov and Triest 2007). Too many older workers could result in lower wages and employment rates at older ages.”

Millennials Rising

Although generational accountants hammer home unprecedented size of the Boomer generation, at 76 million in the US and 10 million in Canada, doomsayers may not be fully factoring the true size and dimensions of the Echo Boom, Boomers’ children. According to various sources, the Millennial Generation has about 80 million US members and still growing due to immigration. Conversely, the Boomer Generation is shrinking and today consists of around 76 million, with another Boomer dying about every 48 seconds. It’s entirely possible that those projecting gloomy future scenarios have not fully considered the true weight of these demographic realities.

Sociological Imagination

The Boomer generation has what Bill Thomas, M.D., a geriatrician, author and founder of the Eden Alternative, calls a unique sociological imagination, with engagement, reinvention, charity, and self-empowerment as keystone values.

For example, one presage of the future on a more granular level may be today’s growing enthusiasm for “slow medicine,” wherein patients deliberately eschew elaborate medical technologies with high risks and marginal benefits. This generation may more typically choose less evasive care at the end of life, quality over quantity.

A Healthcare Economy?

So what if the primary economic engine of North American economies becomes healthcare focused? The 20th century can be thought of as an automobile economy that created a national highway system, parking garages, suburbs, shopping malls, gasoline companies, car companies, and drive-through Starbuck’s. This economy created millions of jobs in highway construction, real estate development, retailing, oil and gas exploration, and franchising. A healthcare economy can also stimulate millions of jobs for physicians, nurses, biotech engineers, genetic researchers, and home healthcare aides.

Technologies developed to prolong productive life and engineer negligible senescence have extraordinary market value and could be sold as exports to other countries, such as rapidly aging Europe, Japan, and China. Money always comes from somewhere and goes somewhere.

Promise to a Generation

In 1983, Alan Greenspan led a commission to address potential trust fund shortfall, leading to a significant increases in entitlement program taxes, assessments that Boomers have been paying. The Commission’s goal was to create surpluses so that when Boomers retired there would be enough money. This was an intergenerational promise: if Boomers pay more throughout the most productive parts of their careers, these programs will be solid and stable when Boomers retire. Three older generations made these promises to better protect and expand their own entitlement benefits, and Boomers responded by accepting higher taxation levels without protest.

As we analyze the social and economic benefits of Social Security and Medicare, it’s also noteworthy to mention that 4 million U.S. citizens under the age of 18 receive Social Security benefits. These are survivors of parents who died prematurely due to diseases and accidents. So the program also provides a safety net for the youngest of society.

Social Security is the one social program in the United States that is the closest thing possible to a guarantee. It serves a role similar to defined benefits retirement programs; yet participation by employers in guaranteed pension programs has been shrinking since the 1980s, from over 70 percent of all employers to less than 35 percent today.

A guarantee eliminates one of the greatest fears of growing older: impoverishment in old age. And although Social Security is not a program offering sufficient individual benefits to support a middle-class lifestyle in retirement, around 40 percent of all beneficiaries rely entirely on Social Security for their post-retirement income. Even though social insurance cannot make up for inadequate savings or resources, it can and does serve as foundation of a balanced retirement plan for many Americans. They can sleep better at night knowing that if all else fails Social Security checks will arrive on time; Medicare will pay medical bills.

Market Risks

One consistent solution offered by most critics of governmental entitlement programs is the recommendation to privatize retirement accounts, “to give individuals more control of their retirement savings.” Personal control over personal income rings sweetly to most Americans, but history has demonstrated that, given a choice, many workers choose to cash out retirement savings upon exiting a job rather than roll them over. Self-empowered citizens often don’t save but squander savings on things they need now, or they pay down current debts.

The typical proposal is for an allocation to private savings accounts in the neighborhood of 2 percent of income. These accounts will then be invested in stocks and bonds, and while certainly they may be well-managed funds, the risk falls on the individual. If the market plunges when an individual would normally retire and his or her personal savings account becomes decimated by collapse in equity and/or bond markets, the individual will suffer consequences.

Even though purveyors of entitlement privatization myths offer assurance with the illusion of potential government backing (wherein shortfalls below investments trigger bailouts by the government), these assurances depend on government promises, and taxpayers ultimately must make up deficiencies. Investment companies managing private accounts will nevertheless receive their fees and commissions, market conditions notwithstanding.

NEXT: SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION OF THE BOOMER GENERATION AND THE FUTURE OF ENTITLEMENTS