Well, when she's 17 in 2023 and trying to figure out which college she should attend and helping drive her parents (quite likely one parent) to the brink of financial ruin, the last of the 75 million U.S. Baby Boom cohort, born between 1946 and 1964, will be considering retirement. "Considering" is the operative term because the average retirement age will have gradually risen thanks to the pressures the Boomers will bring to bear on all aspects of the system, from health care to personal and public pension funding.

Indeed, as the share of U.S. gross domestic product taken up by health care grows from about 14% at present to a projected 20% by 2020, the debate over what to do with all these older people who are not going away quietly will grow more rancorous. Emily could do worse in college than take a degree related to gerontology.

What is unfolding in North America will not quite be a battle of the ages but some long-term inter-generational skirmishing that will increasingly engage public and private discourse. National Post readers got a hint of this in the launch of The Boomer Effect series two weeks ago, when FP Weekend's regular Gen-X column took a semi-satirical swipe at the biggest generation with a piece entitled "Ten Reasons to Hate the Boomers."

I, and most others, took the column with the hundredweight of rock salt it deserved. But some readers e-mailed me to complain bitterly about the ageist tone of the 10 reasons, a reaction that gave the two writers the satisfaction of knowing that they'd accomplished their mission by yanking some chains in oversensitive Boomerville.

The writers stopped short of suggesting some satirical solutions for blunting the growing Boomer blight on society. But the debate over euthanasia, assisted dying and plug-pulling in general will grow as the Boomers age, many of them not so gracefully, and the United States and Canada increasingly become seniors' nations.

It's interesting to note that as recently as the early 1900s, some tall foreheads were thinking out loud about the usefulness of people over the age of 40, never mind 60. In 1905, Dr. William Osler, a widely respected physician-philosopher, told an audience at Johns Hopkins University: "All the great advances have come from men under 40, so the history of the world shows that a very large proportion of the evils may be traced to the sexagenarians -- nearly all of the great mistakes politically and socially, all of the worse poems, most of the bad pictures, a majority of the bad novels, not a few of the bad sermons and speeches."

In his book Age Power, Ken Dychtwald says the novelist Anthony Trollope went even further, proposing that life should have a "fixed period" in order to end "the miseries, weaknesses, and imbecility of old age by the prearranged ceasing to live of those who would otherwise become old." Further, Trollope argued, why should old "un- profitable" people be "maintained amidst all their troubles and miseries." Though Trollope could be a sharp satirist of Victorian times through his novels, he was not kidding.

So, putting the Boomers and their elders down humanely would certainly solve some of the problems that Emily will confront in the seniors' nation of tomorrow. A health and wealth means test might be fairly devised by objective and reasonable Generation-Xers to determine to whom and when the Big Sleep might be applied.

OK. Just kidding. But Emily and her counterpart born this past week in Canada will, as they observe the last of the Boomers turning 60 in the early 2020s, be witness to the end and beginning of two eras. How society will be dealing with this moment in history will largely be decided by the Boomers themselves. While this huge cohort of people will affect how things work out as a group, individuals will be able to help matters immensely by taking care of themselves physically, financially and emotionally.

Emily will discover that she and the new centurion generation will not be retiring at 60. The age of retirement has been creeping up in the past decade and will continue to go up as people live longer, are in better health and resources get scarcer. If 60 is the new 50, then the retirees of the future might discover that 75 is the new 65.

For now, the only thing we can say with any certainty about 2066 is that Mick and the Stones will still be touring with their version of the Antiques Roadshow.