Making Policy for an Aging Century

By Marc Freedman, Civic Ventures

A Demographic Revolution

America is in the midst of a demographic revolution.

Half the people who have ever lived to the age of 65 in America are currently alive – and today's number of older adults will double over the next 30 years as the baby boomers move into later life. By that time, about 25 percent of the entire US population will be over 65. For the first time in our history, there will be more Americans over 65 than under 18.

Just as significant is the transformation of what it means to grow older in this country. Older Americans can now count on unprecedented longevity – a growth of 30 years in the average American lifespan since 1900, from 47 to 77 years. Health and well-being have skyrocketed among this population, as have their social and economic circumstances. A recent Los Angeles Times survey found that the average American over 60 feels 19 years younger than his or her chronological age. Also, their social and economic circumstances have vastly improved. In 1965, 36 percent of the older population lived in poverty, compared with 10 percent today. Equally important, education levels – in terms of high school and college graduation rates – are four times what they were for the older population of the last generation.

The cumulative result of increased longevity, health, vitality, independence, economic status, and education is nothing less than the emergence of an entirely new lifestage between midlife and true old age (characterized by the onset of significant disability). For many, this stage will last 30 years or longer and will be a time of taking on new challenges, making significant contributions, and continuing to learn and grow.

With the first of 78 million baby boomers hitting their 60s in three years, inhabiting this emerging phase in the American lifespan, we will be challenged as never before to develop policies and institutions that can capitalize on these remarkable developments – not only for these individuals themselves, but for the communities where they will live.

Half An Aging Policy

While much policy debate and activity has occurred around the costs and needs of a much older society (particularly focused on Social Security, Medicare, and the Older Americans Act), we have not yet crafted the measures needed to unlock the vast reservoir of social capital present in the older population.

National and community service is a striking case in point. More than a decade ago two experts, Richard Danzig (who would become Secretary of the Navy) and Peter Szanton (from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government) concluded in their book, National Service: What Would it Mean?, that older Americans "may have more to give and more reason to benefit from national service than any other group."

Yet an examination of federal funding today for national service reveals great limitations when it comes to involvement of older Americans. AmeriCorps, the country's largest program to promote national and community service, is overwhelmingly focused on the younger population. Fewer than 3 percent of AmeriCorps participants are over the age of 60.

At the same time, the SeniorCorps contains vast gaps when seen in the context of the new population of older Americans. A full 75 percent of the more than $200 million in federal dollars for the SeniorCorps go to a pair of programs (Foster Grandparents and Senior Companions) restricted to low-income seniors, at a time when the low-income proportion of the older population is less than a third of what it was when the programs were first designed nearly four decades ago.

The remaining balance of SeniorCorps money is focused on the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), largely a matching and referral service that connects potential older volunteers with opportunities in the community. However, a recent 10-year MacArthur Foundation study on Successful Aging – the definitive research effort on the subject – finds a severe lack of high-quality service opportunities for service by older adults in communities. In short, you can't match individuals to opportunities that don't yet exist.

For the 90 percent of the older adult population that is not low-income, few existing opportunities for significant service are being supported through current federal policies – a missed opportunity whose scope is illustrated by findings from a recent survey of Americans age 50 to 75 funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. "The New Face of Retirement" study reveals not only that the current and coming generation of older Americans are planning to make service and volunteering a priority in later life – but that many would like to make the significant contribution of time associated with national and community service.

Overall, 22 percent of Americans 50-75 state that they are "very interested" in community service opportunities involving a commitment of 15 hours a week and including the kind of benefits associated with programs like AmeriCorps and VISTA. For those not yet retired, the percentage of individuals "very interested" jumps to 27 percent.

Even if only a small proportion of these individuals were ultimately convinced to come forward, the result would constitute a windfall for our communities.

Bridging the Gap

Reauthorization of the National and Community Service legislation – along with the Administration's FY 2003 budget request – offers an outstanding opportunity to begin crafting the policies required to make the most of the rapid graying of America.

The Administration's proposals to add greater flexibility to the Foster Grandparent and Senior Companion Programs are a good place to start. However, the single most important area for policy action is investment in the development of a greater range of significant service options for the current and coming generation of older Americans.

The simple fact is that the vast majority of these individuals will not be interested in the Foster Grandparent or Senior Companion programs, or for that matter any specific program. This vast, growing, and extraordinarily diverse group will need a wide range of high-quality options if we are to have a chance of harnessing their great resources of social capital on behalf of communities. And those opportunities don't yet exist at anything resembling the scale necessary or possible.

Civic Ventures' urges a three-part strategy to rectify this problem, addressing both longer-term and shorter-term opportunities:

1. Create a Fund for Innovation: Needed is a steady source of innovation funding, equivalent to the kind of investment made by the Commission on National and Community Service into youth service during the late 1980s, into initiatives with the potential to reshape service by older Americans and to dramatically expand its variety and scope. Investment of this sort has already occurred to an extent, but it has been small and sporadic. For example, the demonstration line item in the SeniorCorps budget has been used from time to time. Now you see it, now you don't is the catchphrase that probably best captures the history of these investments. Obviously, it is very difficult to built new institutions under those circumstances.
   
   We urge the creation of a Fund for Innovation that provides significant, steady resources for not only the creation of promising new institutions, but for the development of existing pilots that show the potential for growth and greater impact. These dollars should be available on a competitive basis – some for national organizations (administered like the National Direct competitive grants in AmeriCorps), and others for single-location initiatives through state Commissions. There should be flexibility in the use of funds to include both administrative and volunteer costs. There should be strong emphasis on accountability and research. And there should be a requirement for significant private matching dollars.
   
   We further recommend that half these dollars be targeted to existing SeniorCorps programs, particularly RSVP projects with the desire to do program development in their communities. Some might choose to replicate successful projects from other communities, or to help launch homegrown initiatives. An investment in the SeniorCorps programs of this sort would create powerful incentives and rewards for the more entrepreneurial programs attempting to meet changing local needs and to wield a greater impact. It would also help to create a culture of innovation within the SeniorCorps.
   
   At the same time, half the dollars should be held for organizations outside of the SeniorCorps. Many national organizations, for example, are eager to involve more older adults in their service activities, among them Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the YMCA of the USA. New resources would enable them to move much more boldly in this direction, and help to expand the field of older adult service. Just as important are dollars for outstanding models outside the national networks: we know from both the public and private sector that some of the most important innovations will come from start-ups in local communities that are unaffiliated with either the SeniorCorps projects or large national service organizations. Investment in these efforts will need to be an essential part of the equation.
2. Make AmeriCorps a Multi-Generational Program: For all intents and purposes, AmeriCorps to date has been a national youth service program. The proportion of volunteers over the age of 60 is tiny. However, the program holds the potential to be a much more robust vehicle for involving Americans across the lifespan in significant service, with particular representation from those two groups who have the time to make a substantial commitment: young people and older adults.
   
   Drawing more older adults into AmeriCorps is partly a marketing challenge, correcting for the inaccurate image that the program is exclusively for youth. However, it will also be necessary to remove barriers to service by older people. Chief among them is the restriction that participants only serve two years in the program. This rule might make sense for a population of young people stopping to serve between high school and college, or between college and their first job – especially if they are serving two full-time years.
   
   However, for older adults service in AmeriCorps is usually part-time and it is potentially long-lasting – a destination more than an interim stage. It makes little sense to require that someone stop serving after two years when they have the capacity and interest to continue contributing; in fact, they are probably getting better at it. If any limit must be imposed, the 4,000 hours that President Bush has challenged Americans to give might make sense. That would mean that an older person who serves half-time or quarter-time would have a good stretch of time to contribute through AmeriCorps before being required to find another vehicle.
   
   At the same time that barriers to older adult participation in AmeriCorps need to be eliminated, it is important to build in incentives at the individual and organizational levels that hold the potential to increase the proportion of older Americans applying to the program. The AmeriCorps benefits package is the best place to start. The Administration's request that the educational award be transferable makes sense, however, a more substantial overhaul should be considered. The benefits package for AmeriCorps was crafted with young people in mind, and it is not the package best suited for individuals at the other end of the age spectrum. For example, bolstered health and prescription benefits might be far more attractive to individuals 60 and above, than the education award. Without raising the cost of the package for an individual, a potentially more attractive alternative (or set of alternatives) for older adults should be piloted.
3. Authorize the Appropriations Requests With the Potential to Advance this Agenda: Welcome, in the context of the preceding recommendations, are two line item requests in the Administration's proposed FY 2003 budget:
   • The $30 million requested in the AmeriCorps budget for a "Senior Service Initiative" appears to have many of the features of the Fund for Innovation suggested above.
   • The $50 million requested in the SeniorCorps budget for "Special Volunteer Programs" has few details, but also contains potential to help underwrite innovative activities in service by older Americans.
   Congress can help move the field forward over the short-term through funding these requests (with language directing their use to stimulate a greater array of service options for older Americans), while creating a long-term vehicles for building the next generation of service by older Americans through a Fund for Innovation.

Realizing the Aging Opportunity

In 1961 President Kennedy told the first White House Conference on Aging that while this country had done much over the past century to add "years to life," the time had come to add "life to those years." An important part of Kennedy's aspiration was in promoting a new service role for older Americans in their communities – and as a step in that direction he proposed creation of a National Service Corps that would include young people but also, in equal measure, older adults. "Retired teachers, craftsmen, and tradesmen really don't want to go to the seashore to fade away, they want to help," announced the chair of the new task force charged with designing the Corps.

Kennedy's dream never found its way through Congress, however, forty years later – on the eve of what may well be known as the aging century – we are once again in the position to develop a set of policies that will help shape what it means to grow older in America. At stake is nothing less than redefining retirement in a manner that holds the potential to work better for everybody – adding meaning and purpose to the later years, harnessing an extraordinary and largely untapped human resource for the civic good, and strengthening ties across the generations.

Some have declared that "demography is destiny," that the aging baby boomers will be greedy and self-centered, concerned only about their own needs and willing to sacrifice the well-being of future generations. They cite age-segregated retirement communities where residents have voted to defund the local public schools and to dramatically reduce services for others living outside the walls of their enclave.

However, this gloomy scenario represents only one possibility for what awaits us in a society made up to an unprecedented degree by older Americans. An alternative prospect is a win-win situation of staggering proportions, one where the weight and joys of engagement are balanced across the lifespan. Public policy will have much to say about which aging society we end up living in, and our policies in the realm of national and community service are an important place to start.

In the words of Peter Drucker – still contributing himself to the public good in his 90s – "the best way to predict the future is to create it."