Hispanic Immigrants May Help Rejuvinate Aging Workforce

 

   Source of graphic:  online version of the WSJ article cited below. 

 

The article excerpted below sketches one solution to the "problem" of the aging boomer workforce.  Michael Milken has suggested that the problem itself may be bogus, because aging, healthy, boomers will just keep on trucking a lot longer and stronger than is usually believed. 

 

The quality of life for some 80 million graying baby boomers in the U.S. may depend in large part on the fortunes of another high-profile demographic group: millions of mostly Hispanic immigrants and their children.

With a major part of the nation’s population entering its retirement years and birth rates falling domestically, the shortfall in the work force will be filled by immigrants and their offspring, experts say. How that group fares economically in the years ahead could have a big impact on everything from the kind of medical services baby boomers receive to the prices they can get for their homes.

Immigrants and baby boomers are two groups whose destinies are converging in the next 20 years," says Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California. "Baby boomers will surrender their economic role to this generation of immigrants and their children," who will evolve into a critical pool of laborers and taxpayers, he says.

Prof. Myers, author of the recent book "Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America," is among a crop of academics studying the link between the giant generation born between 1946 and 1964 and newcomers to the U.S., mainly Latin American immigrants.

 

For the full commentary, see: 

MIRIAM JORDAN. "Boomers’ Good Life Tied To Better Life for Immigrants." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., May 7, 2007):  A2.

 

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