Deere to hire 300 workers a year to replace retirees
[27 January 2004 - Miami Herald - from Davenport, Iowa, USA] Deere & Co. will hire about 300 workers a year over the next five years to replace hundreds of employees who will retire at its four Quad-Cities manufacturing plants, company officials said Monday. A team of management, United Auto Workers Union representatives and plant employees will be responsible for an extensive recruiting effort. "Some of this is being driven by production, but primarily it is the large number of people becoming eligible for retirement," said Andre Harrison, a John Deere manager of industrial relations. ...

Aging society a threat and an opportunity
[21 January 2004 - Toronto Star - From Davos, Switzerland] The prospect of an aging society over the next 20 years, as Baby Boomers exit the workplace and enter retirement, raises some legitimate concerns. If each person in the workforce has to support the pension, health and other needs of a growing number of older Canadians no longer working, does that mean an end to rising living standards and perhaps even a decline? According to a new report from the Pension Readiness Committee of the World Economic Forum, while Canada's public pension system is better funded than many other countries � in large part because the Canada Pension Plan is now partially pre-funded �we could still end up with a situation where the number of workers supporting each retiree falls from 3.7 now to 2 by 2030 with big costs for those still working. The report � Living Happily Ever After: The Economic Implications of Aging Societies � is not pessimistic, provided countries begin acting now to address the needs of an aging society. ...

Respect Your Elders: Looking for smart, reliable employees? The over-65 set is a good place to start
[September 2003 - Inc. magazine] With some hefty new contracts to provide spare parts to the U.S. government in place, CPI Aerostructures was in need of skilled mechanics. But when CEO Edward J. Fred placed an ad in the local paper, he noticed something unusual: In addition to the usual crop of eager, inexperienced youngsters looking to start their careers, the $24 million Edgewood, N.Y., manufacturer was flooded with inquiries from retired mechanics, many of them well past the age of 65. "These were people who had spent their entire lives making planes," Fred says. "And some wanted to work just three or four days a week." ... With a soft economy that has depleted retirement funds and with people living longer, healthier lives, more Americans are opting to remain in the work force long past retirement age. And as Fred recently learned, that represents an unusual opportunity for business owners looking for experienced, reliable employees. In fact, pretty soon hiring older workers will be less of an option and more of a necessity. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 will jump 47.2%, compared with a scant 2.8% increase among those aged 25 to 34, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And those 35- to 45-year-olds who probably account for the bulk of your top management talent? Their numbers will actually drop 13.7%. Factor in the looming insolvency of Social Security and Medicare, not to mention less-than-robust 401(k) plans, and the bottom line is clear: The U.S. work force is getting a lot grayer. ...

A Boomer Corps
[16 January 2004 - New Democrats Online] Martin Luther King, Jr. once said 'Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.' These words inspired former Sen. Harris Wofford and Rep. John Lewis a decade ago to begin their campaign to make Martin Luther King Day into a day of service -- or, as they put it, 'a day on, not a day off.' It is in this tradition of service and inspiration that we put forward our Idea of the Week: a bold new plan to bring 1 million baby boomers a year into service for their fellow citizens, their community, and their country. ...

Normal aging versus Alzheimer's disease and the potential for prevention: Understanding normal aging may provide the key to prevention
[15 January 2004 - EurekAlert - New York] Our improved understanding of how to maintain normal brain health is providing tantalizing clues about what may prevent or reduce the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD), according to Marilyn Albert, Ph.D., a leading authority on risk factors and AD. "The normal aging of the brain is very different from what happens in AD. The old thinking was that the normal cognitive changes in aging were the result of cell loss throughout the brain," said Dr. Albert, director of the division of cognitive neuroscience, department of neurology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and chair of the Alzheimer's Association Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee. "We now know that while there is some cell loss in the aging brain, cell loss in the areas responsible for memory is normally very limited." Dr. Albert spoke today at an American Medical Association media briefing on Alzheimer's disease in New York City. ...

A rift in business, science of aging
[12 January 2004 - Los Angeles Times] Some see aging as a disease to be cured. But many doctors cite a lack of research and question the motives behind a growing movement -- Dr. L. Stephen Coles, a physician and researcher at UCLA Medical School who for years has studied centenarians, made a radical statement to the audience that had gathered last month for the annual conference of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. There is no such thing as anti-aging medicine, he declared to the organization he has belonged to for a decade. The good news, he added, is scientists may achieve real breakthroughs that could lead to longer and healthier life spans � in 20 to 30 years. ...

Advertising: AARP Aims to Deliver Message to Marketers
[12 January 2004 - New York Times] WITH ads that show older consumers who have been body-bagged or toe-tagged while still living, breathing and trying to shop, AARP today began its latest attempt to convince marketers not to write off consumers over 50 years old. 'These days, doctors don't pronounce you dead,' one ad says. 'Marketers do.' The campaign is the latest effort to attract new advertisers to the pages of AARP Magazine, which is mailed to 22 million households, and other AARP publications. While it is not the first bid to sweeten Madison Avenue on people it considers seniors - Reader's Digest magazine and CBS have long pointed out that their many older readers and viewers have higher incomes and spend more than younger consumers - it may be the most confrontational. ...

Stages: Many Miss Out on 'Good Death'
[13 January 2004 - New York Times] Is a 'good death' still eluding too many Americans? A new study suggests that this is the case. After interviewing the survivors of more than 1,500 people who died in 22 states, researchers found that dying patients commonly did not get enough pain medication and emotional support. ...

Time to retire jokes about age: The cruel irony in American culture: We're living longer, but stereotypes about decline begin earlier
[13 January 2004 - Christian Science Monitor] As Margaret Morganroth Gullette explains in her original and provocative 'Aged by Culture,' this 'freaky' time machine 'makes human aging entirely bodily, predictable, and inescapably awful in its concept of decline.' No wonder 'age anxiety' afflicts people earlier and earlier. Gullette, a cultural scholar who calls herself an 'age critic,' challenges the belief that decline is the truth of aging. 'We are aged more by culture than by chromosomes,' she observes. In a society obsessed with staying young, images of unavoidable decline appear everywhere. Conspirators include advertisers, business executives, journalists, and entertainers. Birthday cards joke about midlife forgetfulness. Women's magazines tout the advantages of 'preventive' facelifts before 40. Drug manufacturers promote Viagra and hormone-replacement therapy, fueling a boom in 'youth restorers.' Media portrayals pit 'needy' Gen Xers against 'greedy' baby boomers to create what Gullette calls a 'generational grudge match.' William Safire even describes those between 40 and 60 as 'near-elderly.' ...

Healthy, independent retirees find time to enjoy a whole new life
[2 January 2004 - Washington Post in the Arizona Republic] You're restless. Not so young, but restless. What are you going to do with the rest of your life? You don't look old, don't feel old. But the kids are grown. The house is quiet. And at work? Talk of downsizing, takeovers, the R-word - retirement - and then, what? You can expect to live, and live well, for another three or four decades - an entire life span in centuries past. Instead of winding down, you have to gear up. Instead of sitting back in a rocking chair, you have to find new purpose - new work, new relationships. Longevity's imperative is regeneration. But how do you master the art of reinvention? ...

Planners look to old-timers to rejuvenate aging society
[3 January 2004 - IHT/Asahi - Japan] In 2007, a tsunami of retired baby boomers will crash into Japan's demographic landscape. What's a nation with an ultra-low birthrate to do with the flood of retirees? Put its old-timers back to work. Bureaucrats in the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare plan to expand the range of jobs that can be filled by government-subsidized agencies specialized in placing elder workers. Currently, the subsidized centers can fill jobs only in such areas as gardening, carpentry, cleaning and simple manual labor. Under the proposed guidelines, the centers would be allowed to dispatch workers for skilled tasks including assembly-line work, accounting and research. ...