Will Boomers Change the Meaning of Retirement?

The generation of Baby Boomers has drawn criticism—from themselves, among others—for holding overly high expectations for their lives and for pushing too hard to meet them. These are qualities, however, that could serve them nicely as they strive to grow older with some comfort and purpose. Americans who were born between 1946 and 1964 aren’t as likely to settle for simply retiring to Florida to play mahjong. “They recognize that the current systems in place are not only inadequate to meet the demands of aging, but woefully inadequate to meet their expectations,” says Joseph Coughlin, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab, which studies this fast-coming demographic upheaval. “Now that we’re living so much longer, we do not know what we will be doing with all that time.”