Related topics: •  Active Aging •  Book Review: Successful Aging

Age Power: How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old
By Ken Dychtwald, PhD
Tarcher/Putnam
320 pp $24.95

Until the birth of my daughter Sofia in 1998, I had always considered myself young at heart.

A foreign correspondent in an unpredictable job, I enjoyed as many outdoor activities as time allowed, hitting 80-mile-per-hour fastballs in the batting cage while breathing murky Mexico City air. I could even finish 18 holes of golf at rugged courses more than a mile high. I was proud of never having spent more than an hour or so in a hospital bed.

During one of many border crossings, a U.S. customs official in San Diego asked, "May I see your granddaughter's passport?" And even worse, I spent a week on my back in a hospital hacking through an acute case of bronchitis. In the hospital mirror, I glimpsed a man with a beard that had become more salt than pepper. He had an unfamiliar roll of fat around the waist and an oxygen mask on his face, but the face was still my own.

Now in my 50s, I realize that I am well into middle age. I'm closer to my "senior citizen" discount at the movies than my prime high school years. And of course I'm not alone.

My personal wakeup calls were all the more reason to read Age Power, by the prolific author Ken Dychtwald, who has spent years examining a generation of baby boomers headed over the hill and down into the valley.

In an engaging, easy writing manner, Dychtwald shows how we are not the healthiest of Americans -- even though we jog, we dance, we walk, we eat less beef and more chicken, and we look down on junk food (well, most of it).

Dychtwald lays out stats that show we're even healthier than our kids, who are more apt to be jockeying video games after school than riding bikes. So why is it that our national health costs are skyrocketing? Why are Medicare, the nursing home industry, and budding physicians all gearing up for an onslaught of our middle-aged brethren?

Part of the answer may lie in a recent Newsweek and Discovery Health Channel survey of boomers that showed that while many of us eat less fat and use less tobacco than our parents and grandparents, quite a few pile on the fat and eat little or no fruit. In the poll, these boomers also said they engaged in few strenuous sports, like biking, running, or swimming.

Ironically these are the same boomers who have parents still living and increasingly relying on them for their long-term health care.

Age Power is chock-full of startling statistics and factual tidbits that bolster Dychtwald's thesis that the 21st Century will be run by what he calls the "New Old." Forget the high-powered twentysomethings racing to make their first technobillions. There are not enough of them to outweigh the wealth of Americans now older than 60. And when you add in my generation, forget about it -- old folks rule. Grandpa rockers like Mick Jagger still have more money and clout than a shopping mall full of Backstreet Boys or Britney Spearses.

It's certainly a comfort that I need not go quietly into old age. But Dychtwald also goes to great lengths to point out that my generation is not totally out of the woods. Even though most of us -- 85 percent -- are married and live in dual-income households, even though we've paid more by now in taxes than any other American generation, we are often sandwiched between the simultaneous duties of caring for our kids and our parents.

Worse, Dychtwald says, we're increasingly dealing with a growing list of aches, pains, and chronic illnesses of our own. A lot of them are preventable -- if we'd just eat right and exercise.

Age Power's ample, detailed notes section and index make this one a tome with legs. It will stand out for some time as a must-read for people seeking information about the generation that will shape America in the decades to come. But his analysis is by no means perfect.

Dychtwald does us a great service by highlighting problems ahead for our Social Security, Medicare, and other senior-care services. We've seen the warning signs for years now. American reproduction is declining and can't support a swelling, graying population -- a phenomenon Dychtwald calls the "Birth Dearth." But he fails to recognize what's emerging as our possible salvation: a generation of young immigrants -- many from Third World countries and Latin America -- who are now filling the millions of low-end service jobs and whose tax contributions will likely rescue our retirement funds.

We also see whole chapters that tell us how rich our senior citizens are. We learn the ways medical researchers are racing toward lucrative cures and genetic manipulations that could prop us up and keep us around longer. (Did you know that around the world 100,000 separate anti-aging-related research projects are now under way?) And Age Power tells us, in almost breathless passages, how dynamic our generation is and how it will transform the traditional definitions of "senior citizen."

But there are only five pages that talk about the poverty that many seniors must endure. This fumble bolsters the disturbing suspicion that the senior poor are not the kind of people who are seen to merit much discussion; they don't belong in "up-tempo" feature stories in the Living sections of major newspapers. In our era of "Don't Worry, Be Happy" it seems uncool to read about seniors abandoned in poorly regulated nursing homes, or to be concerned about elders without support systems, decaying in squalid urban residence hotels and crumbling apartment buildings.

Our generation, unfortunately, has a nasty reputation when it comes to charity. Folks in my age bracket were the "Me Generation" that hustled and bumped its way through the 1970s, became Masters of the (economic) Universe in the 1980s, then saw it all crumble amid the savings and loan disaster and recession that marked the early 1990s.

Dychtwald points out that we're being forced to reconsider our selfishness, however: Today 80 percent of long-term health care is being administered outside of hospitals and nursing homes. Maybe there is hope for our sense of family and community. But it aches to come away from Age Power realizing that the senior poor is not an attractive demographic for AARP, which Dychtwald almost deifies, and ultimately portrays as our nation's real economic titan.

Despite its minor faults, this book should be on the gift list for everyone over 40. Sure, some of his advice on staying healthy falls into what my teenage nephews call the "duh" category. Yes, we must walk briskly and avoid that second helping of key lime pie. But Dychtwald speaks forcefully about preventive health care. He argues correctly that the government is shortsighted in doing little to encourage healthy living, and he urges government to make it easier to keep on working past the ages that normally qualify us for permanent fishing trips.

As Dychtwald says, summing up the impact of two aging but thriving generations on the medical, biogenetic, and high-tech industries: "[Boomers'] lifelong obsession with youth will drive large numbers toward these new technologies. In fact, I anticipate that by the year 2020, more than 90 percent of all surviving boomer elders will have had their life expectancies impacted by one or more of the technologies. ... Given these scientific enhancements, all bets would be off regarding how long we might live in the 21st Century."

Live long and prosper, Star Trek urged us. We will do that, most likely, but will we do it responsibly? I'm taking extra care now: I learned, watching my mother die of adult-onset diabetes and high blood pressure, that I must stay healthy enough to provide for my daughter and not be a burden on her when she's 30. After the hospital scare, I'm breathing easier, thanks to the miracle of antibiotics, inhalants, and indoor air filters. I'm also losing weight and eating better, even though the occasional tiramisu dessert still finds its way onto my dinner table.

After all, I can't imagine healthy aging without a few vices.

-- Ricardo Sandoval is an assistant city editor at the Sacramento Bee newspaper. He served as Latin America correspondent for the Dallas Morning News based in Mexico City and is a co-author of The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers Movement (Harcourt Brace, 1997).

Last updated August 26, 2009
Copyright © 2000 Consumer Health Interactive