As so often, the forecasters appear to have created a doomsday scenario out of nothing

As a Baby Boomer, I have more than a passing interest in the forecasts of catastrophic breakdowns in healthcare and social security as the people of my generation all start to retire. So this article from Harvard Business Publishing piqued my curiosity (“The Baby Boomer Retirement Fallacy and What It Means to You”) by showing that most of the doom is based on fallacious reasoning.

It seems that, if you do the numbers correctly, you find far fewer will be dependent on social security benefits that the doomsters claim — and that’s without factoring in the increasing tendency of people to work until well past their ‘retirement date.’ In the area where I live, finding older people working in stores restaurants and other businesses is very common. I’m sure some only do it from necessity, but I suspect for many others what motivates them is the interest they get from working. As people live longer and stay fitter, many don’t want to spend their days in the rocking chair or on the golf course. They know they still have much to contribute and want to go on doing it.

To quote from the article:

The pundits forgot several factors. They forgot that Baby Boomers were actually born over an 18-year stretch, so they won’t all retire together; that many Boomers are already retired; that many of the older Boomers will die before the younger ones retire; and that pre-Boomers and Boomers alike started delaying their retirements over a decade ago – a trend that will likely accelerate in the years ahead. Most importantly, they forgot to actually run the calculations on a year-by-year basis, given all of the above factors.

Maybe all those businesses who are banking on making profits from the ‘gray tide’ of retiring Baby Boomers need to rethink their strategies.

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