Will Boomers die alone and unloved?

Megan McArdle has a good, long feature in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly, talking about how the retirement of the Baby Boomers, which is now underway, is going to put a lot of strains on the US economy and society. You can't see the article without being a subscriber, but you can read this great roundtable discussion among Megan, Clive Crook and Philip Longman, regarding demography, aging and America's future. I was particularly taken by Longman's rejoinder to McArdle's essentially optimistic conclusion (i.e., that yes, it'll be hard, but cheer up, we'll make it through okay). Here's an excerpt from Longman's contribution:

[T]here are major factors McArdle neglects to consider. The big one is childlessness. According to Census Bureau data, an astounding 19 percent of the women born in the mid-to-late fifties (the demographic epicenter of Baby Boom generation) never had children. This is nearly twice the rate of childlessness that prevailed in the previous generation. Another 17 percent of Boomer women only had one child, compared to 9 percent for women born in the 1930s.

These facts have two important implications for Boomers going forward. One should be obvious. A huge and unprecedented proportion of this generation is going to be on its own in old age. Friends will die off or move away. Spouses will pass. Even the many Boomers who raised typical two-child families, especially if they started late, will find that this investment is not enough to insure that even one child has the wherewithal to offer help or to take an active interest in their lives. High levels of divorce will only add to the hidden mass of socially isolated seniors.

Boomers who have had the experience of seeing their own parents age and die will know what a big deal family is to the elderly. What do you suppose happens to nursing home patients who never receive visitors? What happens to shut-ins? A preview of the future came in 2003, when in rapidly aging France a heat wave caused thousands of shut-in seniors to die alone. This is the scariest part of the age wave for me: thousands of seniors found dead in their homes and apartments every day only after the stink, or a wailing pet dog, alerts society. It’s going to be a phenomenon of American life. The best hope, for those who can afford it, is for new forms of communal assisted living.

Another relationship between fertility and aging is less obvious but also important to the future. Within the Baby Boom generation there was a pronounced disparity in birthrates. Those who remained childless or had just one or two children tended to be well educated, liberal, and secular. By contrast, the roughly 30 percent of Boomers who had three or more children tended be conservative, religious, and less well educated. Members of the later group, though only a minority of their own generation, produced more than 50 percent of the next generation.

Already, as I have argued elsewhere, this pattern in Boomer birth rates (which is much more extreme than in previous generations) has led to the country becoming more morally conservative and pro-family. As Dick Cavett once quipped, “If your parents forgot to have children, chances are you will as well.” The anti-natalism inherent in the modern liberal mindset leads to a gradual return of patriarchy, if only by default.

What does that mean for Boomers in retirement? A majority or near majority of younger Americans, having grown up in conservative and religious households, will tend to view childless Boomers through their parents eyes: as members of an irresponsible, alien tribe. Though the minority of Baby Boomers who rebelled against tradition have a hard time recognizing it, most people wind up adopting their parent’s belief systems, particularly if they become parents themselves. The apple rarely falls far from the tree. Accordingly, in the eyes of many, if not most, younger people, a Boomer without a family will be taken for an aging yuppie, a decaying narcissist, or ailing atheist—none of which stereotypes will be helpful in drawing public sympathy.

Clive, in response, is not convinced. Megan adds:

Today’s elderly have already indulged the temptation to maximize their current consumption at the expense of future generations. America’s entitlement problems are simply the national version of the “I’m spending my kids’ inheritance” t-shirts popular with a certain type of senior. How will American policy, and culture, look when the numerous elderly have a lot fewer children to give them a stake in our collective future?

Stewardship never was a virtue of the Boomer generation.