Comparing the Future Concerns of Early Wave Baby Boomers With the Concerns of Young-Old Adults

Abstract

Using data from a statewide needs assessment survey, this study examines and compares the self-reported future concerns of two age groups in Mississippi: Early wave Baby Boomers (age 55 to 64; n = 383) and the young-old (age 65 to 75; n = 349). Items under analysis focus on issues related to future concerns surrounding financial resources, health, and employment. Results from multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) indicate that Early wave Baby Boomers have higher levels of future concern than the young-old group in all three areas. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that the financial and employment concerns of the Baby Boomers were higher than the concerns of the older group even after subjective well-being and income were taken into account. However, age differences in health concerns disappeared after controlling for current health and well-being. These findings suggest that the financial concerns of the Baby Boomers extend to the whole cohort and not just to the most financially stressed.

Keywords

Baby Boomers aging subjective well-being

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Anderson

(2010). Chronic care: Making the case for ongoing care. Princeton, NJ: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/reports/2010/rwjf54583

Beinhocker

E. D.

Farrell

Greenberg

(2009). Why Baby Boomers will need to work longer. McKinsey Quarterly, (1), 118-127.

Beverly

Mcatee

Costello

Chernoff

Casteel

(2005). Needs assessment of rural communities: A focus on older adults. Journal of Community Health, 30, 197-212.

Biggs

Philipson

Leach

Money

(2007). The mature imagination and consumption strategies: Age and generation in the development of a United Kingdom boomer identity. International Journal of Ageing & Later Life, 2(2), 31-59.

Biswas-Diener

Vitterso

Diener

(2010). The Danish effect: Beginning to explain high well-being in Denmark. Social Indicators Research, 97, 229-246.

Blumberg

S. J.

Luke

J. V.

(2008, May 13). Wireless substitution: Early release of estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, July-December 2007. Atlanta, GA: CDC/National Center for Health Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis.htm

Blumenthal

(2010, May 26). Cell phones and coverage bias. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www/huffingtonpost.com

Bowling

(1995). What things are important in people’s lives? A survey of the public’s judgements to inform scales of health-related quality of life. Social Science Medicine, 41, 1447-1462.

Browdie

(2010). The future of aging services in America. Generations, 34(3), 56-60.

10.

Carstensen

L. L.

Turan

Scheibe

Ram

Ersner-Herschfield

Samanez-Larkin

G. R.

Nesselroade

J. R.

(2011). Emotional experience improves with age: Evidence based on over 10 years of experience sampling. Psychology & Aging, 26(1), 21-33.

11.

Charles

S. T.

Reynolds

C. A.

Gatz

(2001). Age-related differences and change in positive and negative affect over 23 years. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 136-151.

12.

Cherlin

A. J.

(2010). Demographic trends in the United States: A review of research in the 2000s. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 403-419.

13.

Christian

Keeter

Purcell

Smith

(2010, May 20). Assessing the Cell Phone Challenge to Survey Research in 2010. Retrieved from http://pewresearch.org/assets/pdf/1601-cell-phone.pdf

14.

City of Oakland. (2004). City of Oakland: Senior needs assessment: Outline and initial findings. Retrieved from http://www2.oaklandnet.com/oakca1/groups/dhs/documents/report/oak029576.pdf

15.

Colorado Division of Human Services. (2004). The status of older adults in Colorado. Retrieved from http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&blobheadername2=Content-type&blobheadervalue1=inline%3B+filename%3D%22State+Status.pdf%22&blobheadervalue2=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1251694161405&ssbinary=true

16.

County of Los Angeles. (2004). LA County seniors count. Retrieved from http://css.lacounty.gov/Data/Sites/1/documentlibrary/AAA/css-nar-080501.pdf

17.

Eggebeen

D. J.

Sturgeon

(2006). Demography of the Baby Boomers. In Whitbourne

S. K.

Willis

S. L.

(Eds.), The Baby Boomers grow up: Contemporary perspectives on midlife (pp. 3-22). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

18.

Ehrlich

B. S.

Isaacowitz

D. M.

(2002). Does subjective well-being increase with age? Perspectives in Psychology, 5, 20-26.

19.

Elder

(1998). The life course as developmental theory. Child Development, 69(1), 1-12.

20.

Frey

W. H.

(2010). Baby Boomers and the new demographics of America’s seniors. Generations, 34(3), 28-37.

21.

George

L. K.

Bearon

L. B.

(1980). Quality of life in older persons: Meaning and measurement. New York, NY: Human Sciences Press.

22.

Greenwood

Seshadri

Vandenbroucke

(2005). The baby boom and the baby bust. American Economic Review, 95, 183-207.

23.

Heckhausen

Dixon

Baltes

(1989). Gains and losses in development throughout adulthood as perceived by different adult age groups. Developmental Psychology, 25(1), 109-121.

24.

Helman

Copeland

VanDerhei

(2012). The 2012 Retirement Confidence Survey: Job insecurity, debt weigh on retirement confidence and savings. EBRI Issue Brief, 369(1), 5-32.

25.

Hudson

R. B.

Gonyea

J. G.

(2012). Baby Boomers and the shifting political construction of old age. Gerontologist, 52, 272-282.

26.

Inder

K. J.

Lewin

T. J.

Kelly

B. J.

(2012). Factors impacting on the well-being of older residents of rural communities. Perspectives in Public Health, 132, 182-191.

27.

Jack

(2007). Thinking aloud about poverty and health in rural Mississippi. Preventing Chronic Disease: Public Health Research, Practice, and Policy, 4(3), 1-4.

28.

Kahneman

Diener

Schwartz

(1999). Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology. New York, NY: Russell Sage.

29.

Keyes

C. L. M.

Waterman

M. B.

(2003). Dimensions of well-being and mental health in adulthood. In Bornstein

Davidson

Keyes

C.L. M.

Moore.

(Eds.), Well-being: Positive development throughout the life course (pp. 477-497). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

30.

Levy

B. R.

Myers

L. M.

(2004). Preventive health behaviors influenced by self-perceptions of aging. Preventive Medicine, 39, 625-629.

31.

Levy

B. R.

Slade

M. D.

Gill

(2006). Hearing decline predicted by elders’ age stereotypes. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 61, 82-87.

32.

Levy

B. R.

Slade

M. D.

Kunkel

S. R.

Kasl

S. V.

(2002). Longevity increased by positive self-perceptions of aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 261-270.

33.

Levy

B. R.

Zonderman

A. B.

Slade

M. D.

Ferrucci

(2009). Age stereotypes held earlier in life predict cardiovascular events in later life. Psychological Science, 20, 296-298.

34.

Lucas

R. E.

Donnellan

(2012). Estimating the reliability of single-item life satisfaction measures: Results from four national panel studies. Social Indicators Research, 105, 323-331.

35.

Martin

L. G.

Freedman

V. A.

Schoeni

R. F.

Andreski

P. M.

(2009). Health and functioning among Baby Boomers approaching 60. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 64B, 369-377.

36.

McMahan

E. A.

Estes

(2011a). Measuring lay conceptions of well-being: The beliefs about well-being scale. Journal of Happiness Studies, 12, 267-287.

37.

McMahan

E. A.

Estes

(2011b). Hedonic versus eudaimonic conceptions of well-being: Evidence of differential associations with self-reported well-being. Social Indicators Research, 103, 93-108.

38.

Morton

L. P.

(2001, Fall). Segmenting publics: An introduction. Public Relations Quarterly, 46-47.

39.

Pruchno

(2012). Not your mother’s old age: Baby Boomers at age 65. Gerontologist, 52, 149-152.

40.

Riediger

Schmiedek

Wagner

Lindenberger

(2009). Seeking pleasure and pain: Differences in pro-hedonic and contra-hedonic motivation from adolescence to old age. Psychological Science, 20, 1529-1535.

41.

Riggs

Turner

B. S.

(2000). Pie-eyed optimists: Baby-boomers, the optimistic generation. Social Indicators Research, 52, 73-93.

42.

Schulz

J. H.

Binstock

R. H.

(2006). Aging nation: The economics and politics of growing older. Westport, CT: Praeger.

43.

Sundali

Westerman

J. W.

Stedham

(2008). The importance of stable income sources in retirement: An exploratory study. Journal of Behavioral & Applied Management, 10(1), 18-46.

44.

U.S. Census Bureau. (2011). The Black population: 2010 (C2010BR-06). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

45.

U.S. Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration. (2009, November). Current Population Survey (CPS) Internet Use 2009. Retrieved from http://www.ntia.doc.gov/data/CPS2009_Tables.html

46.

Yan

Silverstein

Wilber

K. H.

(2011). Does race/ethnicity affect aging anxiety in American Baby Boomers. Research on Aging, 33, 361-378.

47.

Yun

R. J.

Lachman

M. E.

(2006). Perceptions of aging in two cultures: Korean and American views on old age. Journal of Cross Cultural Gerontology, 21, 55-70.

48.

Zeitz

(2005). Boomer century. American Heritage, 56(5), 32-45.

49.

Zhang

Penman

M. W.

May

(2011). Using small-area estimation to calculate county-level prevalence of obesity in Mississippi. Preventing Chronic Disease, 8(4), A85.