ON RE-DEFINING THE ISSUES

SHARP CURVES AHEAD

This article from the Atlantic, titled "No Country for Young Men", focuses on the issues surrounding an important trend that'll drive our economy, social fabric, and politics for a long time to come.  The sub-title of the article clarifies:

"The Baby Boomers’ retirement will change the texture of society in ways we’ve scarcely begun to contemplate. A dispatch from America’s coming silver age."

The article starts by showing how productivity can be a double-edge sword with this demographic:

"As the Boomers age, they will consume fewer of the things that we produce efficiently, and more of the things that we provide relatively inefficiently. Productivity is notoriously difficult to pro­ject, but many forces will be pushing it downward as the Baby Boomers age."

It explains:

"Since services are labor-intensive, and the number of service-consuming seniors will grow rapidly, we’ll need a lot more workers (that’s bad news for those who favor restrictive immigration policies, particularly the kind that keep low-skilled workers out).

And, of course, the mix of service workers that we’ll need will be different from what it is today. In effect, the next 20 years will require a massive transfer of resources and people away from the care of children, who will decline in relative number, and toward the care of old people."

And gives some stark numbers:

"This rebalancing should have already started, but it hasn’t. Consider that approximately 29,000 pediatricians now work in the United States, caring for roughly 75 million children.

To care for roughly half that number of patients over 65, the American Geriatrics Society reports, the country has only 7,128 board-certified geriatricians. Just 468 first-year fellowships in geriatric medicine were available in the 2006­–2007 academic year; nonetheless, almost half of them went unfilled.

It’s not just doctors: according to the John A. Hartford Foundation, which promotes (among other things) geriatric-nursing education, fewer than 20,000 registered nurses and nurse-practitioners are certified in gerontology.

Lower-skilled jobs in long-term care, such as certified nursing assistant positions, should theoretically be easier to fill, but several states report that shortages exist in these areas as well."

As of today, we have exactly 365 days to go before we choose a new President, and the current President leaves the White House. 

The campaigns of candidates from both parties focus on issues like the Economy, Security and Immigration, amongst others as if they are separate, unconnected issues.

But they're inextricably tied together, as just this little zoom-in on our evolving demographics shows so vividly.

Most of the leading candidates already understand these trends, but can't really talk about them in the current cut-throat, political season, where very vocal minorities can dramatically influence the tenor of the debate*. 

What may be of more concern is that most of mainstream citizenry may not.

*  As is the case with immigration, which ranks towards the bottom of the concerns of most voters, according to recent polls, with 4-5% of the voters citing it as a leading concern.  See this op-ed piece titled "Ronald Reagan is Still Dead" by Frank Rich in the New York Times for more.

Comments

[Alex Tolley]

"Productivity is notoriously difficult to pro­ject, but many forces will be pushing it downward as the Baby Boomers age."

That depends on whether the elderly really will increase in absolute numbers without a decline in the young as well.

It seems to me that as the elderly increase, it could stimulate a market for productivity enhancing products and services. For example, in the UK, it used to be that there were nurses who made regular calls on the elderly in their homes to check on them. Today that might be more easily done with electronic monitoring - so a wearable device with bio-sensors could alert a service that the person was poorly and send out a medically trained person quickly, as needed.

I'm sure there is a wealth of ideas that could be exploited given a market and a demand for services that cater to the needs of the elderly.