One Nation under AARP began about eleven years ago as a somewhat lonely and largely investigative, qualitative study that was gradually supplemented by an increasing amount of quantitative data gathered by others. The key question that informed the study was: How will aging baby boomers cope with getting older in a changing society? In what ways will their aging be similar to—or different from—that of previous generations? And, finally, if threatened cutbacks to pensions, Social Security, or Medicare emerged, would aging boomers politically mobilize to defend embattled entitlements?
A related—and originally very much hypothetical—question was posed in a 1997 PBS Frontline documentary, “Betting on the Market,” that I still use in my undergraduate class “Inequality, Politics, and Public Policy.” Long before Jacob Hacker wrote Risk Shift, this documentary illustrated the increasing dependence of baby boomers upon the stock market in financing their retirements. Though produced during the heady stock market boom of the 1990s, at the conclusion of the report its producer and narrator, Ron Chernow, paused to ponder: “What would happen if we had a sustained bear market after a lot of the baby boomers had retired? They were all past fifty-nine. They were beginning to draw from these different retirement plans that were invested in the stock market and yet, suddenly, their stocks were under water. On paper, their investments were down 30, 40, 50 percent. What would they do?”
I had no idea that there would be a sneak preview of Chernow’s stock market meltdown scenario just I was trying to bring my research to a close in 2008.
A decade ago, I was amazed to find few other social scientists interested in the topic of aging boomers’ politics and sociological future. The few books with “boomers” in the title went largely unsold and unnoticed. Some economists—many of the “doomsday” variety—were issuing grim projections on Social Security and Medicare. But in political science and sociology there was almost no interest. Nor were savvy Beltway political strategists aware of the impending clash of seventy-eight million baby boomers, a major recession, and strained and soon-to-be embattled entitlements.
The early and middle phases of the study, therefore, were much informed by “elite interviewing,” interviews and conversations with some sixty persons in strategic organizational positions and with expertise on aging boomers in the areas of Medicare, social security, gerontology, and workforce issues. These included persons at the National Academy on an Aging Society, the Urban Institute, Brookings Institution, the Employee Benefits Research Institute, the U.S. Corporation for National Community Service, several anonymous sources in the U.S. Congress and the George W. Bush White House, the Alliance for Healthcare Reform, the National Committee for the Preservation of Social Security and Medicare, Merrill Lynch, Inc., Metlife Mature Market Institute, Eons.com, BBHQ.com, ThirdAge. com, and many other organizations. Over the years, through “snowball sampling,” I worked my way to another twenty additional consultants, experts, and others interested in aging boomers—including some of the “frontline” career planners. [The general methodology of this research has been guided by two social science classics: Lewis Dexter, Elite and Specialized Interviewing (Northwestern University Press, 1969) and Jack Douglas, Investigative Social Research (Sage Publications, 1976), as well as a more recent manual by Joseph A. Maxwell entitled Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach (Sage Publications, 1996).]
Especially during the past two years, in the wake of the 2008 stock market crash and the onset of the Great Recession, it has become hard to keep count of all the people I’ve talked with about aging baby boomers, especially with regard to the numerous “reinterviews” and ongoing conversations I have repeatedly conducted over the years with a core group of experts and friends in a variety of settings. (The annual meetings of the American Society on Aging/National Conference on Aging have been fertile fields of data and insights.) Most people indulged me, knowing that Fred Lynch would inevitably start asking about and talking about “aging boomers” for the book he was forever writing.
The tempo and complexity of this research increased considerably in 2009 as the debate over comprehensive health care reform (and Medicare) began to emerge. Happily, this focused public and professional attention on many of my core topics, especially baby boomers and AARP. The long drought of secondary data turned into a flood of new data and reports on baby boomers—especially after the 2008 economic meltdowns. As a result, to some extent, the book has become not only a sociological field study but also a work on rapidly changing contemporary history.
The emerging central focus upon AARP in the book and its title grew out of my realization, during the research process, that “all roads led to AARP.” They had—and still have—most of the data and expertise on aging baby boomers. It is still true, as I have often said, that “Nobody knows boomers like AARP.” They are also well prepared for the coming debates over Social Security and Medicare. As I conclude in the book, currently there is simply no other organization that can lead, mobilize the troops, and fight the good fight to preserve these programs.
I especially wish to acknowledge the extensive time, accessibility, cordiality, cooperation, and insights of numerous AARP officers, editors, and research staff. They are indeed “Boomer Central.” The surveys and focus group research conducted by their Public Policy Institute and Knowledge Management Division are extensively referenced throughout this book.