Solutions Get Tougher:

US and Other Developed Nations - especially Japan - Are Going to Be Absolutely Top-Heavy With Gray Hair.

Ron Dzwonkowski, Editor, Detroit Free Press Editorial Page

March 28, 1999

If you need something else to worry about, look in the mirror. You're getting older. That's the problem. So is everyone else. Pretty soon, the United States and other developed nations such as Germany, Italy and especially Japan are going to be absolutely top-heavy with gray hair.

You can debate the science and impact of global warming. But global aging is indisputable. It's a matter of math. More people are living longer.

The implications are huge, no matter what your age today. If you're already elderly, you could be in the test kitchen for some of the policy changes that will be cooked up to serve the crowd behind you as all the baby boomers achieve senior status. If you're in the boom, you may find a society unable to meet your needs unless you pitch in by staying employed. If you're young, you may be on the receiving end of new incentives to have a family, or coping with a massive influx of immigrants needed to keep the place running.

In a new book, "Gray Dawn," former Commerce Secretary and presidential adviser Pete Peterson, who began sounding an alarm about Social Security back in 1982, describes global aging as "an iceberg dead ahead."

"Visible above the waterline are the unprecedented growth in the number of elderly and the unprecedented decline in the number of youths over the next few decades," Peterson writes. "Lurking beneath the waves, and not yet widely understood, are the wrenching economic and social costs that will accompany this transformation -- costs that threaten to bankrupt even the greatest powers...

"The economic and political outcome could make today's Asian or Russian crisis look like child's play."

Cheery stuff, huh? The generation that stopped the Vietnam War, ushered in the computer era and ignited the roaring economy of the 1990s is destined to end up as a bunch of poor old folks, shuffling around with osteoporosis or prostate trouble, wondering if the government check is coming and what became of Medicare. Except for the Rolling Stones, who will still be touring.

Peterson says it doesn't have to happen, if the United States and other developed nations face up to fiscal reality, raise retirement ages, reduce pensions and cut back entitlement programs for the elderly. That would take political courage seldom seen on a large scale, because the older people get the more likely they are to vote, no doubt a manifestation of enlightened self-interest in retirement -- and entitlements.

But now's the time, when the economy is growing.

The boomers doing most of the consumer spending these days aren't saving anything, according to government reports. Many are heavily into stocks and real estate. The former is subject to abrupt "corrections," the latter has value only if someone else has the money to buy it. Bankruptcies were at an all-time high again last year.

So despite this current period of sustained growth, it does seem likely that a substantial portion of the population will need entitlements starting around 2020.

"From a society that once felt obliged to endow future generations, we have become a society that feels entitled to support from our children," Peterson observes. "Unless this mind-set changes, Americans may one day find that all they are really entitled to is a piece of the national debt."

Older folks need health care, too, and younger folks to provide it.

But the birth rate in developed nations has dropped from 3.7 per woman in a lifetime to less than two -- not even replacement rate. Meantime, populations spiral out of control in the impoverished Third World.

What's wrong with this picture?

Well, for one thing, it's real, and it's not that far off.

But for another, it's based on the notion that older people are inherently a burden, that they will be the problem, rather than involved in the solution.

For a long time you have heard politicians proclaim that children are our most precious resource. It's time they also took seriously the notion that the elderly are our greatest treasure.

They are entitled to some things. They do not aspire to be a burden. Nor do they wish to be pampered. But they can still do math. They can see what's coming and -- with the wisdom of the ages -- probably understand better than their boomer kids what needs to be done to protect future generations of the elderly.

Older folks have spent their lives making hard choices to face an ever-changing future. Like the Stones, they know you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need - and that's just enough.

Ron Dzwonkowski is editor of the Free Press editorial page. You can reach him at 1-313-222-6635, or write him at the Detroit Free Press Editorial Page, 600 W. Fort St., Detroit, Mich. 48226, or via E-mail at: dzwonk@freepress.com.