Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America
by
Marc Freedman
Marc Freedman predicts that "a new kind of aging" will soon bring new life to America. In Prime Time, he writes that the baby boomers will turn their golden years into an intense time of social activism, volunteerism, and lifelong learning. In retirement, the Woodstock generation will still be trying to change the world. "The boomers will not accept the old notions of later life and retirement--they will refuse to remove themselves, go away or put up with being taken 'out of use or circulation'," writes Freedman, founder of the private, nonprofit Civic Ventures. However, to harness that energy for society's benefit, Freedman argues, government and business need to create programs that capitalize on baby boomers' love of learning and community service. The country also needs to wipe out ageism and other barriers.
Prime Time highlights a handy list of initiatives that already tap retirees for such roles as foster grandparents and volunteers at free medical clinics. The book also profiles people who are now reaping the benefits of remaining socially productive. Freedman debunks the notion that old boomers will only be a burden on the nation's health care and Social Security systems. Instead, they will be the largest, best-educated, and healthiest group of retirees ever, he writes. Insightful and well written, Prime Time is for anyone concerned about the economic and social changes under way with the aging of the baby boomers.
From Publishers Weekly
Freedman (The Kindness of Strangers), founder of Civil Ventures and an adviser to government and private groups on aging, contends that drastic social changes must be made to adjust to the coming demographic shifts in America. Within the next 50 years, based on current life expectancy, the number of people age 65 and older will surpass the number of people under age 18. With people healthier and living longer than ever before, the vision of retirement as leisure time is obsolete.
Book Description
This "inspiring, informative, mind-opening book" (New York Times) provides a new vision on aging, retirement, and the role of older Americans in the 21st century. Over the next three decades, the number of Americans over fifty will double, swelling to more than a quarter of the population. Already we are living thirty years longer than a century ago, with further gains expected in the coming years. The end result is a new stage of life, one as long or longer than childhood or middle age in duration, and one spent in unprecedented good health. Yet, as individuals, and as a society, we've shown little imagination or wisdom in using this great gift of a third age. Marc Freedman identifies the new longevity as not a problem to be solved, but an opportunity to be seized-provided we can engage the experience, talent, and idealism of older Americans. At a juncture when the middle-generation faces a time-famine, struggling to simultaneously raise kids and work long hours on the job, the older generation is awash in free time, poised to succeed women as the trustees of civic life in this country. In the process they stand to find new meaning and purpose in their lives, and abandon the limbo-like state unfulfilling for so many older individuals. Freedman argues that the aging phenomenon, the massive transformation that many portray as our downfall, may in fact be our best hope for renewal as a nation.
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