By Mark Wolf
Everyone knows America is getting older: hip one day, hip replacement the next. Baby boomers are becoming seniors at a dizzying rate and birth rates are down. We may not be far from centenarians standing on their front porches and yelling at octogenarians, “You kids get off my grass.”
James Johnson Jr. captivated the opening general session of NCSL’s Spring Forum with a mix of statistics (the 65-plus demographic grew 12.8 percent in the 2010 census while the 25-44 group lost 2.2 percent), anecdotes (“CVS dropped the height of their shelves to accommodate the aging population”) and projections for the impact on society that spanned from dire to optimistic.
Eschewing the podium and wading into the crowd of attendees as if he was engaging an eager classroom, the professor at the Kenan Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, touched on a wide variety of social and economic impacts of “The Silver Tsunami.”
“We are in the midst of a profound demographic transition,” said Johnson, adding that every region and every state is part of the process.
Calling the South the “cat’s meow” of demographic revival, Johnson noted that it had recorded slightly more than half (51.4 percent) of the nation’s growth from 2000 to 2009. ‘And somebody loses in that equation,” he said.
A rapid increase in “marrying out” (couples marrying across racial and ethnic lines) is contributing to what he called “the browning of America” and will lead to a dramatic transformation in families.
“Children (of these families) who walk in school doors will be radically different,” he said.
Healthier living habits and the promise of regenerative medicine are expected to make the aging population even older, which, combined with a lower birth rate producing fewer young workers, presents tremendous challenges including the sustainability of Social Security.
“We need every young person we can get and we need to educate them to the best of our abilities,” he said.
Eldercare, he said, is going to require dramatic transformations in society. “Childcare is routineized. You drop them off at 8, pick them up at 5. Eldercare is 24/7 365 days. Today, work organizes our lives. In the future, life will organize work. We are going to have to be agile and flexible organizations to accommodate.”
Still, Johnson stressed, the “silver tsunami” can offer huge opportunities for innovation and job creation, especially in fields designed to help seniors stay in their homes and to prevent falls: “The longer we can keep people in their homes, the better off they’re going to be and we’re going to be.”
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