Boomers: Not old, not young

Their big number – 76 million – is not the only striking statistic about the Baby Boomer generation, the youngsters to whom local developers expect to sell all these new lots.

This generation is “unique among the 7,000 or so generations of humans who have ever inhabited the earth,” according to researchers quoted in the New York Times Sunday. What they are finding is this: “Human bodies are simply not breaking down the way they did before.”

The generation just now reaching retirement is taller, is living longer, is staving off chronic illness for an additional ten to 25 years, and is experiencing less disability.

Research is surmising that, since much of our body is complete before birth, the sort of health we can expect in our middle age was to a great extent determined in our
fetal life, and in our first two years after birth. Those “middle-aged” today are the first generation to grow up with childhood vaccines and antibiotics.

In 1900, 13 percent of people who lived to age 65 could expect to see 85. Today, nearly half of 65-year-olds can expect to live that long. Fifty-year-olds today are in a new place: not old, not young.

The steadily improving health of recent generations is showing up in population after population, in country after country, across the world, even now being seen in developing nations. In contrast, health records show “almost everyone of the Civil War generation was plagued by life-sapping illnesses, suffering for decades.” The average man was 5 foot 7 and 147 pounds. We are “so big and healthy” nowadays, grandpa wouldn’t recognize us.

In fact, the picture of humans today is so different from what it was in the past that scientists say they too “are startled.”

Thermal Belt business and political leaders would do well to consider the lifestyles, as well as the numbers soon to be arriving here. Old age for this retirement wave will not be anything like the old age we’ve known. — JB