NPR Morning Edition

June 16, 2005

 

Ken Dychtwald discusses an international study on attitudes towards retirement

By Renee Montagne

Today's business segment focuses on retirement. At least since the 1950s, retiring has been the reward at the end of a long work life, permanent leisure, poolside if possible. The current debate over Social Security has thrown that dream into some question. So we visited the National Mall in Washington, DC, to find out who some baby boomers now envision their later years.

Mr. RON ROSS (Baton Rouge, Louisiana): My name is Ron Ross. I'm 63 years old. I'm from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I would like to keep my mind active, perhaps involved with some kind of technology, maybe doing some editing of books and articles. I do a lot of writing and reading now, so I'd like to keep those skills going.

Ms. LILIAN DIAZ(ph) (Turlock, California): My name is Lilian Diaz and I'm 53 years old, and I'm from Turlock, California. And I'm still happy working. I'm not a person that can just sit on the sofa and watch TV. My hope for the future for retirement, for relaxation, it's to be out there with the grandchildren. Traveling would be wonderful.

Mr. DANA BEAL(ph): My name is Dana Beal. I am 58, almost 59. And I thought a little bit about nation building. I just spent a year trying to build a federal criminal court for Iraq in Iraq. And if the right opportunity came along, I'd be interested in doing some nation building.

MONTAGNE: Not everyone has such ambitious post-retirement goals, but a new study concludes that a lot of younger people actually want to keep working into their later years. To talk about just what that will mean to them and to their employers, we've asked Ken Dychtwald to join us. He's the president of Age Wave, which conducted this international study.

Good morning.

Mr. KEN DYCHTWALD (President, Age Wave): Good morning.

MONTAGNE: Now the main finding in your study appears to be that baby boomers--that would be the younger people--view retirement differently than their parents and that they do, in fact, want to pursue both work and leisure.

Mr. DYCHTWALD: Exactly. I think what we're seeing is that retirement is a--kind of an interesting social experiment that most people now view we've gotten partly right. Let's keep in mind that over the past century we've gone from an average life expectancy from about 47 to about 77. And also, the whole demographic makeup of countries like the United States and Japan and, let's say, the United Kingdom have changed quite dramatically. And partly, what's happening is that we're now getting a chance to really think about what this additional longevity means to us. For our moms and dads who, in a sense, are retirement's guinea pigs--first of all, most of them thought they might live a few years in their retirement. And since many of them work lives that involve physical labor, the idea of retirement as being a time to kick back and relax and rest a bit before the end made good sense. But now for boomers throughout the world--as we begin to envision not a 70- or 75-year life span, but perhaps 85 or 90 year or even a hundred years of life. I think many of us are beginning to wonder: A, `Can we afford to not work?'; and, B, `Would it be satisfying?'

MONTAGNE: There was an interesting figure in your study about how people who are retired spend their time, and it had to do with how much TV they watch, suggesting that there wasn't much to do.

Mr. DYCHTWALD: The average retiree right now watches 43 hours of television a week, and the average retiree has also got the lowest volunteer and social contribution level of any adult segment in our population. But by the way, I would point out what these studies are showing--and this particular study was sponsored by HSBC bank--but what we see is that throughout the world we sort of move people out the door in their early '60s. Retirement was constructed initially in the 1930s in the United States not for the purpose of creating a leisure class but because the unemployment levels had reached 25 percent. And so Roosevelt had a very serious problem on his hands. One-quarter of all the young people couldn't get work, which meant they weren't getting married. They weren't starting their families. They couldn't buy a flat or rent an apartment. And so he created retirement to make room for all these young people. Today we don't have that demographic problem. In fact, a lot of employers are beginning to worry about a brain drain.

MONTAGNE: So what does that mean for employers?

Mr. DYCHTWALD: I think you're going to see employers begin to respond by creating more flexible retirement and more flexible work possibility. And you're going to see the educational system come alive as 50- and 60-year-olds think about retraining themselves and start up on whole new chapters and new beginnings.

MONTAGNE: This, of course, all suggests that these are people who can afford to do all of the above.

Mr. DYCHTWALD: Well, I don't know that that's exactly the case. This passion to be relevant; you see it at every level. You see people of low income wanting to volunteer in their churches and mosques and synagogues. You see people of means wanting to contribute to charities. There's lots of opportunities for people up and down the ladder to stay connected, to stay relevant.

MONTAGNE: In surveying people in other parts of the world from the United States, did you see some similarities in attitudes or are people very different in what they think in China and Brazil? Because, well, their economies and societies are quite different.

Mr. DYCHTWALD: Strangely enough, what we saw was that in those countries that were agriculture based, more rural, there was a great expectation on the part of the elderly that their children would care for them in retirement, but among the children of these people, less of an intent to do so. As regions such as South America and Asia become more modernized, the younger people start to think of pursuing their own dreams. And they see a TV show or they get on the Web and they noticed that people in other countries may not sacrifice their lives in order to care for their parents and grandparents.

By the way, I would tell you that the Americans were actually the most involved with financial considerations. They were the second least likely region in the world to expect their children to support them in their later years. So our sort of do-it-for-yourself style in our culture, in a strange way, was gearing the American population for a greater ability to fund and motivate themselves in their retirement than we saw in countries of the world where people have more historically relied on their government of their family to care for them in their later years.

MONTAGNE: Ken Dychtwald is president of Age Wave, which conducted an international study on attitudes towards retirement.

Thanks very much for joining us.

Mr. DYCHTWALD: Thank you so much.

MONTAGNE: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.