An Older America Can be a Richer America

Eighty as the new 60. Sixty as the new 40. There’s truth to the clichés (as there usually is). From Barbara Walters’s presumed facelifts to Willie Nelson’s illegal smoke, growing old isn’t what it was. For one thing, it lasts a lot longer, which means that the ranks of seniors will continue to swell. Baby boomers are fast becoming elderly boomers, a demographic change that will shape the nation’s society—and its economy—for decades to come.

This edition of The Next Economy, a quarterly supplement produced jointly by The Atlantic and National Journal, explores the effects of this demographic certainty. Will baby boomers and their entitlements crush their children by weighing them down with debt? Will boomers put off retirement and take up jobs that younger folks want, touching off generational warfare? Scariest, was Malthus right? If Americans live longer and longer—for an individual, there’s no happier news—will society inevitably outrun its resources?

The fashionable answer to such questions is the ugly one. But even in these days of economic unease, the glass-half-empty rejoinder isn’t always correct.

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