The Atlantic Online, February 23rd, 2008

It is cliché to speak of sleepy little
country towns, but my mother’s hometown goes beyond sleepy into Rip van
Winkle territory. Newark, New York, has more churches than bars. Neat
clapboards and stately Victorians line quiet streets wrapped tight
around the Erie Canal. Drive through Newark quickly, and it looks like
America’s past. Stay a little longer, and you begin to recognize it as
our future.

Walk into one of those churches on a typical Sunday morning, and you
will find only a few, startling islands of brown or blond hair amid a
sea of gray. Almost 20 percent of the population is over the age of 65.
(The town’s economic fortunes have declined along with those of the
Erie, and many younger workers have left.) On the street where my
mother grew up, and my aunt now lives, the only children you see are
visiting their grandparents.

The former Midlakes Middle School, which sits in neighboring Phelps,
has transmogrified into “Vienna Gardens,” a private independent-living
facility where my grandmother now lives. The bones of the schoolhouse
are still clearly visible under the carpet and overstuffed couches that
line the halls; the residents take their meals in the cavernous former
gymnasium. Vienna Gardens is home to 64 people, but the place has an
empty feel. The rent is out of the reach of many of the area’s seniors.

Those seniors, eventually, may end up at the county nursing home. It
is a new and lovely facility. But its supervisors are leery of slipping
into the red; most of its residents are on Medicaid, and the program’s
meager payments don’t cover costs. Any overruns would likely be made up
through taxes, and the seeds of a tax revolt appear to be germinating.
Local property taxes are already high: the school tax alone is 2.5
percent of assessed home value each year. Many of the town’s residents
grouse about their tax bills. Local school officials are nervously
eyeing nearby Monroe County, where the county executive wants to cope
with budget woes by diverting school money into county coffers.

As Newark has aged, its commerce and the nature of its workforce
have shifted. The Wal-Mart in town is busy, even on a weekday
afternoon, and several local clothing stores have closed. While neither
phenomenon is unique to Newark, the town’s aging has doubtlessly
contributed to both: big-box stores appeal to the elderly not only
because of lower pricing, but also because they put more goods in one
place, enabling seniors who can’t walk far, or who have difficulty
getting into and out of cars, to make the most of each shopping trip.
At the local community college, new programs in health care are
proliferating.

At a gala event held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.,
on October 15, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling— born one second after
midnight on New Year’s Day 1946—became the first Baby Boomer to file
for Social Security benefits. Over roughly the next 20 years, close to
80 million of her fellow Boomers will follow suit. By 2030, America
will look like Newark. Almost one in five Americans will be in life’s
golden years, up from about one in eight today.

A lot of op-eds have been written about what will happen when the
Boomers retire. Like our policy debates, they tend to focus, somewhat
remarkably, on accounting. Will the Social Security Trust Fund
go bankrupt? Does the trust fund really exist? These questions are too
narrow, and they don’t yield particularly useful answers. As Newark’s
experience suggests, the retirement of the Boomers will transform the
texture of our society. How will it change our economy, our culture,
our politics? When it’s over, will America look better, worse, or just
different?

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