Old Baby Boomers still spur change

Let me see if I have it right:

Older Americans ought to keep working in order to lighten the burden of Social Security and assorted benefits on younger generations. Older Americans ought to retire in order to make room for younger people needing jobs. There you go.

This may be the most mixed message to come out of this economic disaster. The conflict between boomers and their offspring, first ballyhooed in the 1990s, seems to have re-emerged in new shapes and sounds all over depressed and recessed America. So we now have studies such as the one from Northeastern University warning that "We have steadily increased the ranks of the employed with older workers and thrown the young out in the cold." And we have warnings from economists about the effects of the huge transfer of income from younger workers to older retirees.

What exactly is going on here? And is there any way for elders to be peacemakers? It is absolutely true that in the last 15 years, Americans began to work longer. Changes in Social Security encouraged it, as did longevity and attitudes. Now the implosion of the stock market and the decline of 401(k) plans have put retirement somewhere over the rainbow.

People who were ready to leave are hanging on to the jobs that other people expected to fill and so on down the line, freezing the job market in place. Older workers who lost their jobs face discrimination getting new ones. People coming out of retirement are searching for any job at all. I tip my hat to the chivalrous foodie bagging my groceries.

Meanwhile, the folks revving up generational conflict overlook the fact that most of us do not live or think in age cohort groups. We belong to families. If public money is transferred from younger workers to older retirees, private money flows downward from older parents to adult children and grandchildren. In this economy, some older workers are clinging to their jobs to keep younger unemployed members of their families afloat.

But if the downturn comes with the seeds of generational conflict over jobs, it also carries packets of social change. The boomer generation can make a virtue - or a revolution - out of the necessity of working longer. We already know that more people in their 50s and 60s are more interested in renewal than retirement. Marc Freedman of Civic Ventures talks about "encore careers" for those who want to bow out of their midlife careers and move into work with social value, giving them something to be proud of.

One innovative idea would make national service an on ramp for encore careers. The bipartisan Serve America Act coming to the Senate floor next week not only expands AmeriCorps with its young and old population but provides model fellowships in 50 states that would help adults over 55 enter new areas where they're needed, such as education or the environment. It's not surprising that this job falls to the baby boomers. The social-change generation led this country to think differently about race and gender. Perhaps it can do the same for age.

So, generational conflict? Not necessarily. Instead of being competitors we can be mentors in the changing business of aging.

© 2009, Washington Post Writers Group