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AgePower 
How the 21st Century Will be Ruled by the New Old
by Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D. 1999 (also the author of Age Wave (1990 video tape), Healthy Aging: Challenges and Solutions, Wellness and Health Promotion for the Elderly, New Directions for Eldercare Services, BodyMind, and many others)

               Reviewed by Henry Lahore of Skyaid.org  3/01/01

Four outcomes of gerontocracy (page 1)

1. More of us will live longer than in any previous generation
2. The epicenter of economic and political power will shift from the young to the old
3. We will need to change our current mind set about how to spend our extra years of life
4. How we decide to behave as elders will, in all likelihood, become the most important challenge we will face in our lives.

The New Mature (page 20-21)

  • Control more than $7 trillion in wealth—70 percent of the total

  • Own 77 percent of all financial assets 

  • Comprise 66 percent of all stockholders 

  • Own 40 percent of all mutual funds ($1 trillion) 

  • Own almost 60 percent of all annuities 

  • Represent 50 percent of IRA and Keogh holders 

  • Own their own homes—over 79 percent of all 50+, by far the highest rate of any age group

  • Own 46 percent of home equity loans 

  • Transact more than 5 million auto loans each year 

  • Purchase 42 percent of all homeowner's insurance (50 million policyholders)

  • Own 38 percent of all life insurance—a $90 billion industry

  • Purchase more than 90 percent of long-term care insurance, representing $800 million 
    in annual premiums—a figure that's growing at 23 percent per year

  • Comprise 35 percent of the auto insurance market (50 million consumers)

  • Represent 40 million credit card users, owning almost half of the credit cards in the U.S.

  • Purchase 41 percent of all new cars (they're much less likely than their younger 
    counterparts to buy used cars) and 48 percent of all luxury cars, totaling more than $60 billion

  • Represent more than $610 billion per year in direct healthcare spending

  • Account for 51 percent of all over-the-counter drug purchases

  • Consume 74 percent of all prescription drugs, a $103 billion market

  • Represent 65 percent of all hospital bed days, 42 percent of all physician's office visits, 
    1.5 million residents in nursing homes, and 1.5 million residents in continuing-care retirement and assisted-living residences.

Five Social Train Wrecks We Need to Prevent (pages 78-83)

#1 "Using 65 as a marker of old age - and the onset of old-age entitlements - is meaningless, unfair, and even dangerous".    Germany's Bismarck selected 65 as the retirement age 120 years ago, when life expectancy was only 45,  By the time the US started 65 as the retirement age the average American lived 63 years.  {65 is the retirement age in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Greece, Mexico, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.  60 is the retirement age in France, Hungary, Japan, Korea, and Turkey  - page 92}

#2 "Without a dramatic shift in healthcare skill and priorities our society will face epidemics 
    of chronic disease"  Currently 47% of the world's people over age 85 suffer from some form of dementia. 

#3 "A caregiving crunch could become the social and economic sinkhole of the 21st century"

#4 "Tens of millions of boomers are heading toward a poverty-stricken old age."  
      Personal savings rates:  South Korea -25%, Japan 12-15%, Europe - 10%, US - 4.9%

#5 "Without envisioning a new purpose for old age, we are creating an 'elder wasteland"  
    Currently 40 million retirees spend an average of 43 hours a week watching television. 

Is 62 old? (page 85)  Literary agent's grandfather - had  lived a long life and died an "old man" at age 62, 
yet, "everyone lamented that his father had lived such a short life and died so young." when he died at age 62.

During this century we have added 100 days of longevity EVERY YEAR  (page 86)

Retire Early?  page 93    70% of Social Security recipients now opt for early-retirement (before age 65)

Less time spent working: 
150 years ago work was 40% of time a person was awake 
    (life expectancy of 40 years, started work in early teens, worked 60 hours a week for all but 1 or 2 weeks a year).  
Now work is 16% of time awake
    (start at age 20, live till 75, retire at 61, 40 hours per week, six weeks vacation per year)  page 104

Medicare covers less than 50% of a typical elder's healthcare costs.  
It will pay for quadruple bypass, but will not reimburse for services to help prevent heart disease (pg 113). 
More than 60% of elders will need long-term care at some point.  
The average extended care nursing home stay of 2.5 years costs more than $100,000. 
Medicare pays for only 25% of such services (page 113)
53% mistakenly believe that Medicare will pay for nursing-home care of Alzheimer's disease (page 149)

A new legal niche is protecting assets from Medicaid's requirement to be poor (pg 150)

Many more who are >85 in the US (page 118)
1900 - 0.12 million
1999 - 4.1 million (3,280% increase)
2040 - 16 million (400% increase from 1999)

Healthcare costs (direct and indirect) are staggering:
   Heart disease $183 billion  
            [save $69 billion annually if could delay onset of heart disease by 5 years pg 130]
   Cancer $107 billion (10% of all healthcare spending)
   Stroke $45 billion
   Musculoskeletal disorder $ 80 billion  (arthritis, osteoporosis) 
   Alzheimer's disease $100 billion

22 million households now actively provide eldercare  -an increase of 300% in the past decade page 144

The average boomer will have more parents than children (boomers are a sandwiched generation)
- the author, for example, has 2 children and five parents/grandparents.  
He anticipates that the average 21st century American will actually spend more years caring for parents than children (page 146)

Typical caregiver (73% are women) is a 45-to-55-year old woman who works full time 
     and spends 18 hours per week caring for her 77 year-old mother.  
41% of elder caregivers have children of their own under age 18.

An AARP report stated that 49% of caregivers had to make adjustments to their daily work schedule, 
   and 12% ultimately had to leave workforce altogether    pg 147

10X fewer of 65+ live in adult child household  page 147
In 1960 40% lived in household of adult child, by 1999 this dropped to only 4%.

Nursing home occupancy is running at nearly 95%, 
     but it is difficult to plan ahead for stroke, heart attack, and cancer (page 151-2)

Solutions being tried around the world to eliminate the age 65 retirement problem include

  • Retirement spread across ages 60-70 (more benefits for those who work longer)

  • Sabbaticals

  • Less than 40 hours per week as a person gets older

  • Have older and retired workers serve as mentors (Dupont 7,000, AT&T, FedEx, etc.) page 224

Links to AgePower and Age Wave material on the web:

http://www.healthandage.com/positivelifestyles/gergen/publi/0101020023/010102p0023.htm

http://www.agepower.co.uk/

http://www.babyboomers-seniors.com/nov00/agepower.html

http://www.pbs.org/pressroom/2000/winspring/releases/agepower.html  PBS March 2000

http://www.agewave.com/agewave/index2.html  author was the founding president of Age Wave