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Harvard School of Public Health | The Aging Workforce: Challenges and Benefits for the Public's Health

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CHRIS ARNOLD: Hello, and welcome to the Harvard School of Public Health. I'm Chris Arnold with National

Public Radio. We have a great panel today.

And we're going to be starting the panel soon. I'm also going to tell you that the Huffington

Post is streaming today's event. So thank you to them. Our panel is a group of academics,

researchers, and policy experts who will discuss the burgeoning numbers of people living and

working longer and the implications for society.

This program will include a brief Q&A, and you can email questions to

[email protected] I promise I won't read everything, but I need to get that right--

[email protected]. If you have questions, you can also participate in a live chat

session that's happening on the form right now.

So first, we're going to turn to Lisa Berkman, who is the Professor of Public Policy and of

Epidemiology at the Harvard Chan School and the Director of the Harvard Center for

Population and Development Studies. You've been looking at a lot of these issues. What are

you finding?

LISA BERKMAN: So overall, by far the most important thing is that societies are undergoing a demographic

transition that the world has never seen. It's never been before in human history that we have

aging societies. And by aging societies, we mean societies in which there are more people

over 60 than there are under 5. And globally in the next decade, the world will be a globally

aging world, and the United States is about right in the middle of these demographic

transitions.

So there are some countries ahead of us, countries like Japan. We know Italy, Germany,

France are ahead of us in this demographic transition. And there are many countries just

behind us, but not too far behind us if we look at demographic transitions in China, India,

South Africa, a whole set of lower and middle income countries that are booming.

And the causes of these transitions are very easy. They're twofold. One is life expectancy has

increased over time for many, many people, so people are living longer. But more importantly

in terms of this demographic transition, it happens because fertility is declining. So you can

think of China as the perfect example where a one child policy-- and now somewhat

expanded-- along with human increases in life expectancy completely transformed the society.

So this kind of transformation makes every institution that we have challenged to rethink what

it needs to do to adapt to a society that's fundamentally different than one we know about.

CHRIS ARNOLD: Right. This is implications in housing, which I've covered a lot. There's implications in the

workplace. There's obviously economic implications. You need more money if you're living

longer. So there's almost no part of our lives day to day that is not going to be affected by this.

LISA BERKMAN: Right. That is absolutely true.

And perhaps one of the most interesting ones is around work. So we used to think people

would retire at 65 or 62, or if you were in Europe, you were going to retire at 55. And now

we're looking at three more decades of life expectancy. If we take as a center point Social

Security, when Social Security was started, people could expect to live a year or two after

social security, after they received Social Security. And for people who were disadvantaged--

for instance, African Americans never reached the age at which to get Social Security. So they

paid in without ever receiving the benefits.

Today, we have a society in which average life expectancy once you're an adult is about

another 19 years, and longer for women. So how we think about how we're going to transform

work is terribly important.

And I'll just make one more point, and then we can start talking about all the policy options.

There won't be one solution. There will not be one solution to this. Some people, like many of

us in this room, will continue to work and work well, well into old age with lots of opportunities.

And other people will have a great deal of disability. They're in jobs that are very tough and

physically demanding. In French, the word for these words is [FRENCH], which is painful. So

you have to have options for people that are multiple and allow people to maximize their

capacities without being able to be overwhelmed by the need to work longer.

CHRIS ARNOLD: One thing you were saying that's interesting, too, is people working longer are those people

taking work away from younger people. Younger people are having trouble getting into the

workforce if people are working longer. Is that a problem? Is it not a problem?

LISA BERKMAN: This is a huge myth-- it's called lump of labor-- with the idea that there's a fixed number of

jobs, and if people stay in the labor force too long, they're going to take it away from other

people. Older people take jobs from younger people. Women take jobs from men. Migrants

take jobs from non-migrants.

In fact, it's a complete myth. And what people have discovered as they've gone on is that this

lump of labor fallacy is not true, because in fact, people in the workforce create jobs for other

people. So we all flourish in a society where everybody works.

CHRIS ARNOLD: I believe now we're going to see a clip for the next few moments. We're going to take a look at

it. It's from the multimedia project called Over 50 and Out Of Work from Tree of Life

Productions. This features Steven Murphy who, after working in sales in the printing industry,

found himself out of work at age 57 and struggling to get a new job.

STEVEN MURPHY: I have the background. I have the understanding. I'm PC proficient. I don't just go to any job.

I'd go to a job I'd feel would be a fit for the company, a fit for me.

Basically, what happens-- and this is happening over and over again-- is they said, OK, now

we're going to the next level. And he'll be a regional manager or something like that. The guy

will come out. I passed all these tests, passed all these phone interviews. And he'll walk out.

Face drops. And then he brings me in, and I have a five-minute interview. Well, they just told

me how great I was in the phone interview. He's saying, basically, you're too old.

I don't see a real lot being said anywhere about how deep this age discrimination goes. And

there's no question. Because I'm not just talking about me. I'm seeing other people who have

these fantastic credentials and years of experience, and they can't get to square one.

CHRIS ARNOLD: We're going to hear next from Deborah Whitman, who is the Head Policy person at the AARP,

which has many, many million members. I am reading here 37 million members. So what are

you hearing from some of those members about these issues?

DEBORAH

WHITMAN:

Thanks for having me. I'm sorry I wasn't there in Boston, although it sounds like it's a little hard

to get into the city today. I think we're hearing from the vast majority of our members that they

want to work until they're in their 60s and some in their 70s, and most expect that they'll have

to. We see that in the data. We've seen a change in trends from people retiring earlier and

younger, both in this country, as Lisa mentioned, and many others.

And this is really good news for the most part. Most people find that they're having more

cognitive engagement and better health if they stay in the labor market. I know some of the

experts will go into detail about that. It's good for our economy. Older workers, the baby

boomers, are some of the most educated and experienced workers we've ever had in human

history. And their experience and contributions can add a lot. As employees, they have less

turnover, higher levels of engagement.

And for public programs, it's also a good thing where you see people contributing their tax

revenue from their employment and not taking money out in public programs. But why are

they doing it? They're mostly doing it because they need to. As much as many people want to

work and stay engaged, we also see and hear from our members that that three-legged stool

that they thought they would have in retirement, and social security, a pension, and a pool of

retirement savings just isn't enough. And so for many, the third leg of the stool isn't a pension.

It is a paycheck. And they're continuing to work.

We're also seeing that people are healthier, that women who have entered the labor force

later in life need to continue, so they have built up retirement savings. So for all of these

reasons, we're seeing this change in the transition to what retirement is and when people

retire.

But I think Lisa spoke really well, as did Mr. Murphy. The picture is not all rosy for everyone.

Many-- about half-- have some kind of a physical disability in older ages or have something

that keeps them from being able to fully engage in the labor market. And if an older worker

loses their job-- and Mr. Murphy talked about this extensively-- it is really hard to find a new

one. The periods of unemployment are longer. And once they're out, it's even harder to get a

new job.

So for all these reasons, I think we need to think differently about our society and about what

work is, about when we work, about how we embrace a variety of people within a job market,

where employers can see the benefits, like The Intern that just came out, of having young

people who have less experience as well as old people who do.

CHRIS ARNOLD: And we're going to turn next to Christina Matz-Costa. And Christina, you conduct research at

the Center on Aging and work at Boston College looking at productive aging. Can you tell us

what that means, productive aging?

CHRISTINA MATZ-

COSTA:

Sure. So the idea behind productive aging is that it puts forth this fundamental view that the

capacity of older adults needs to be developed and utilized in activities that have an economic

contribution. And so we're talking about activities that produce goods and services in some

way, whether paid or unpaid. So it opens up the possibility that engagement could include not

only paid employment and self-employment, but also volunteer opportunities, formal volunteer

opportunities, informal volunteer opportunities, and perhaps even caregiving-- caregiving for

elders, caregiving for adults with disabilities, children-- and perhaps career-related education.

So we think about education that allows people to get into employment or volunteer

opportunities.

And so this opens up that conversation to consider these other forms of work that are

essentially undervalued but that a lot of older adults tend to participate in. This takes a social

development kind of approach to dealing with the challenges of an aging population. And also,

we know that historically, older adults have been pushed out of or discouraged from being

involved in these types of activities. So it's important to promote them, develop supports

around their continued engagement in these types of activities.

The research tells us that at the individual level, continued engagement in productive activities

is related to health-- so functional well-being, cognitive well-being. It can reduce social

isolation. It can increase quality of life and overall well-being. It can help to mitigate the

negative impact of age-related loss, so widowhood, for example, and loneliness.

And then at the community level, it can have powerful impacts on the ability of older adults to

age in place. The community initiatives could be enhanced by engaging the talents of older

adults. And this is a cost effective approach to improving communities, perhaps.

And also, it's a social justice issue. To what extent should all older adults-- or all individuals,

regardless of age-- be able to be involved and participate in all levels of the economy?

CHRIS ARNOLD: I've always thought about this. It seems like there's a lot of opportunity there for people to

have exciting, interesting, engaging things going on. If you think of life as four quarters of a

basketball game or something, the fourth quarter is the most important quarter. And often,

retirement is thought of like, OK, well, we're shipping people off to pasture or something. It

sounds like you're saying, look, OK, well, let's have more creative interfaces with the

workplace. Maybe you could work half time, or other types of jobs, or do something that you've

always wanted to do. That this could be done right, some of the best years of people's lives,

right?

CHRISTINA MATZ-

COSTA:

Absolutely. And you've raised an important point that is a focus of my research, which is on

designing quality roles. So is it just getting involved in anything? There's this busy ethic

associated with retirement-- that just staying busy is what you need to do to age healthfully.

But what we've found is that it's really not just staying busy in any of these activities, but really

looking at the subjective experience of your involvement in these activities.

So in a study that we did, we looked at people who were volunteering and working, and we

found that those who are highly engaged, who are psychologically invested in what they were

doing, felt a sense of meaning connection to what they were doing, had higher psychological

well-being than those who weren't involved in those roles at all, which is what you might

expect. But we found also that those who were low in engagement, who were just showing up-

- they weren't necessarily connected psychologically to these roles. They were just doing them

maybe because they had to, or they weren't that engaging. These folks actually had lower

psychological well-being compared to those who weren't involved in these roles at all.

So it suggests that thinking about the quality of roles, what types of opportunities are available,

is an important aspect of this conversation.

CHRIS ARNOLD: And we're going to turn next to Francine Grodstein, who is a Professor of Medicine at Brigham

and Women's. And what parts of all this are you focusing on?

FRANCINE

GRODSTEIN:

So we could kind of think of me as the little red caboose that pushes everybody up that hill. In

order to age and maintain a presence in the workforce, whether it's a formal professional

workplace environment, or a volunteer environment, or whatever other activities people enjoy

engaging in as they get older, your health and well-being is going to be a critical aspect of

being able to do those things.

And our ability to maintain our health-- the work that my group does focuses especially on our

memory. And I think that's something we all really think about a lot as we get older and are

concerned about. Our ability to maintain an active, engaged life and work as we get older is

quite dependent on our memory. And there are things we really need to start thinking about at

much younger ages.

Many of the aspects of our lifestyle that people are constantly telling us to do are important for

maintaining your memory as we get older, too. So messages such as having a healthy diet in

mid life, in older life. There really is. It's never too early to start, and it's never too late to start.

CHRIS ARNOLD: And what sort of range of activities? I was reading somewhere that a top neurosurgeon at one

of the hospitals here plays basketball three times a week. Everything comes back to basketball

with me for some reason. And he said, this is the thing that's going to keep me sharp and

engaged till I'm 95 years old.

Is that true? What range of activities? Eat well. Is it also do things that are not what you do

every day at a desk to challenge your mind in other ways?

FRANCINE

GRODSTEIN:

There really is a whole variety, which is good, because everyone can find something they like.

So in terms of exercise, we really find that a broad range of physical activity types can help

you maintain your memory over time-- even something as basic as a brisk walk. So it doesn't

mean that at age 50 or 60 or 70, you need to go out and run a marathon. A brisk walk most

days of the week, we have found, does help people to maintain their memory as they get

older. So it can be quite simple. In addition, most of the dietary components that you do hear

about throughout your life-- a diet with lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, minimizing

the amount of red meat and increasing instead fish intake-- those things will help your memory

as well as the other parts of your body and your other body systems.

Something else we have begun to do research on that to me is the most important to think

about-- so initially, we started out just looking at people's memories and how your lifestyle can

influence your ability to maintain your memory. And more recently, we've been expanding that

to really consider overall health and well-being. So on the study that I work on, we have

identified a subset of participants who have survived past age 70-- so they're living to older

ages-- but Simultaneously, have no major illnesses, have good physical function. So they're

able to get around, do their own food shopping, take care of themselves. They also have good

memory, and they also have good mental health.

So we've identified a subset of participants who have been able to maintain all of those things.

And certainly, those are all critical components of being in the workforce or being a volunteer

and being able to do those things well. And one of the most key predictors of that overall

healthy aging is weight. So we find that people who can maintain a healthy weight and not

become obese are actually 80% more likely to be healthy as they get older-- and truly, health

in that big term-- health and well-being and memory function. So that message we do also

hear all the time about a healthy weight, trying not to gain too much weight as we age, which is

something many of us do, is really critically important in thinking about wellness as we get

older.

CHRIS ARNOLD: So 10 pounds is probably not a huge problem. But beyond that, is--

FRANCINE

GRODSTEIN:

5.

CHRIS ARNOLD: OK. I'll work on that.

So this is a good segue to our next portion, which is on solutions. And let's start with

economics. Because I think having a healthy, happy life is hard if you're totally broke in

retirement, which we have a crisis here in America outside of Social Security. I was just giving

a talk yesterday. Janet Yellen spoke not too long ago at the Boston Fed, and talked about how

basically half of American families with children have almost no assets whatsoever. And at that

stage in your life, if you have almost nothing saved, you're starting from a hard place. And as

we go forward, the vast majority of Americans are not ready for retirement.

So what can we do? One interesting thing that I saw I was just over in the UK this past

summer. And I did a story about a very interesting policy that they're enacting there where

every single worker in the United Kingdom is being automatically enrolled in a 401k-style

retirement savings plan. So the behavioral economics of this is people want to save. We want

to do it, but we're just very bad at starting, and then we make bad choices once we actually do

start.

So what they're doing in the UK is they're saying, look, every employer has to automatically

enroll you, and you're going to be defaulted into a really smart, well-allocated, low fee mix of

stuff that's going to grow well over time. They're finding 91% of people-- people can opt out,

because they're not manacling people. But 91% of people stick with it.

And this is something-- our country is not too dissimilar from the United Kingdom. So I thought

this was super interesting. We've got a clip and a slide show here we're going to play to hear a

little bit more about it.

NARRATOR: At an outdoor market in London, 30-year-old Garfield Bloomfield is selling vegetables. And he

smiles at me like I'm making a joke when I ask him if he's saving for retirement yet.

GARFIELD

BLOOMFIELD:

I'm not really saving for the future. I would like to save for the future, obviously. But at the

moment, I'm just working to get by, really.

NARRATOR: Psychologists and behavioral economists say that there are all kinds of reasons that people

don't start saving for retirement until it's too late. And some of them are very good reasons.

GARFIELD

BLOOMFIELD:

My wife is not working at the moment, because she decided to go back into studies. So I'm not

really saving towards the future.

REPORTER: Because you're just not making enough to have any extra?

GARFIELD

BLOOMFIELD:

Not making enough. And I've got kids to take care. So it's like-- yeah.

NARRATOR: Of course, in the US, wages have been stagnant. A lot of people here, too, feel like they're just

scraping by. But here's the thing. If you take someone like Bloomfield and enroll him

automatically in a retirement savings plan-- that is, he doesn't do anything at all, but money

starts coming out of his paycheck-- the odds are that he'll keep saving even though right now

he thinks he can't afford it.

And because of the new laws, Bloomfield's employer soon will have to do just that. Charlotte

Clark is the top government official for retirement savings in the UK. She met me at the market

here and explained that over the past year or so, a lot of workers have already been enrolled.

WOMAN: We've still got another couple of years to roll out to all employees, so we've still got some way

to go. But we've got five million people saving.

REPORTER: And this is the amazing thing-- that people can opt out if they want. They can say, no, no. Give

me all my money. Thank you very much. But when you sign people up, you've been finding

that they actually stick with it.

REPORTER: Yeah. We're seeing over 90% of people sticking with it. So that's 9 out of 10 people are

deciding that this is the right thing for them.

CHRIS ARNOLD: Deborah, let's start with you. Our Congress has not been known in recent years for doing bold

things. But what do you think about this as a policy concept? Is it something that's being talked

about?

DEBORAH

WHITMAN:

I love it. We need to do everything we can to help people. Because we know if we just leave it

up to people, the odds are they're never going to get enough or sign up themselves. Right

now, we have about half the population who work for employers that don't offer the ability to

save through your paycheck. We also have about half the population that gets no incentive to

save through the tax system.

And so when we look at people getting close to retirement age, we see about 1/2 of them not

having anything at all saved for their future. We have to make it easy for people. I think what

you heard on your clip was that they auto enrolled. But we can auto escalate over time so

people are contributing a little bit more each paycheck. We can auto rollover if you've switched

jobs.

And while the US Congress isn't doing anything at the federal level, we are seeing a number of

states-- California, Oregon, Illinois for example-- that have passed legislation so that if you

don't work for an employer who saves, the state will help pool those and drive down costs.

Other states, like Washington and New Jersey, are looking at a marketplace bottle. But we

have to do more to help people make it easy to put just a little bit aside each paycheck.

CHRIS ARNOLD: And so this sounds like something that could work. Are there things that don't work? Are there

things we shouldn't be doing?

DEBORAH

WHITMAN:

I think, again, all auto futures are generally good. But what you're automatically enrolling

people in has to be smart. So you need to enroll them into funds that have low fees, for

example, so it doesn't eat away at their principle. You need to look at [INAUDIBLE] leakage so

that when people change jobs, they don't take everything they saved out of the workplace.

And we also, I think, need to not just leave it up to the individual to figure out how to manage

their money when they retire. I think we spend a lot of time thinking about helping people save

and very little time helping people think about how to manage their money so that it lasts as

long as they do. And I don't think any country has got that last part right.

CHRIS ARNOLD: And that's very tricky and very important. We're doing a series on NPR called "Your Money

and Your Life" where many, many, many Americans would have twice as much money when

they retire if they weren't paying such high fees, for example, to their investment advisers, to

their mutual funds. And asking the average American to try to navigate this sea of marketing

noise that gets beamed at all of us all the time is challenging.

In the UK, what they've done is set up this default system that's prescreened and super smart

and a great way to invest. Here, we don't have something like that right now. Go ahead.

DEBORAH Even in the money that you put your savings into, that you could be auto-enrolled in, often into

WHITMAN: a target date funds, really looking at how those assets are chosen so that the funds that are in

the pool don't have high fees is really, really crucial. So there's a lot of hidden ways for people

to take your money that ends up eating away at everything you're doing to put it aside.

CHRIS ARNOLD: This might-- I don't know if you want to take a moment to talk about the fiduciary rule that the

Labor Department is working on to try to make this better. This is to require employers and

financial advisors in employer-sponsored retirement plans to be fiduciaries, to act in the

worker's best interest, right?

DEBORAH

WHITMAN:

We think this is so important. As important as disclosure of fees is that the person managing

your money should be doing it based on what's good for you, not necessarily what's good for

them. And the Department of Labor is about to finalize their rules. We think that this will have a

huge implication on people's long-term retirement savings by keeping more money in their

accounts and more wise investments that they're advised to take.

CHRIS ARNOLD: Yeah. I think this is something we're reporting on at NPR. It sounds super boring, the fiduciary

standard for retirement, but it's very important.

OK. So now we're going to talk with Lisa and Tina about part-time leaves of absence, flexible

schedules, and the importance of that.

LISA BERKMAN: Sure. So one of the major goals if you consider you want to have people in the workforce

longer, and they're going to age and have some kind of either disability themselves, or they're

likely to be in family situations, not only with young children, but with their partners or their

parents-- then rethinking work in terms of how it's organized becomes really central. And

policies that enable people throughout the life course to work part time, to have schedule

control, to have leave, whether it's sick leave for themselves or others, will be a cornerstone of

any sorts of future policies.

And part of the issue will always be that rather than asking individuals-- workers-- putting them

in a situation where they have to ask permission, rather, what we need is a set of policies that

show that workplaces can reorganize and become adaptive to a new workforce so that we're

thinking about workplace policies, not individuals coming and saying, really, I need a leave.

Can we make a special circumstance? But making that really apparent, and having that be

something that occurs throughout their lifetime. So right now, we think mostly about family

leave for people with young children. But in the future, that's going to be one little slice of what

concerns people about family leave. Family leave could be about any number of family

members. And thinking about it more broadly will be crucial, I think, in the coming decade.

CHRISTINA MATZ-

COSTA:

Yeah. And at the Center on Aging and Work, we've spent a lot of time thinking about this

concept of workplace flexibility and what it means for older workers in particular. And we see it

as having some choice and control over when, where, or how one works. And so it can mean

a lot of different things.

And the extent to which employers are offering these flexible work options varies a lot by

industry sector, by employer size. So larger employers tend to offer these types of policies

more universally, and smaller employers may offer them, but they're more this one off kind of

situation oftentimes. But we know that across all industry sectors, 1/3 of employers felt that

they had established options for employees to work in a flexible manner to a moderate or

great extent.

So we've got a long way to go in terms of workplace flexibility being offered on a large scale.

And we know that most older workers prefer some kind of non-standard type of setup. So they

don't want to work the 9 to 5, five day a week type of schedule. And one study by Merrill Lynch

found that only 6% wanted to actually work full time of baby boomers. 42%, said they wanted

to cycle in and out of work. 16% said they wanted to work part time. 13% said they wanted to

start their own business. So there's lots of variety in terms of the types of alternative work

arrangements that older adults are looking for.

CHRIS ARNOLD: And Francine, let's talk about making workplaces healthier places, like we're talking about, so

that we do live longer, healthier lives. I understand Google just moved some parking lots so

people have to walk farther to get to the office. I'm not sure if that's going to solve all of the

employees' exercise problems.

But what could my employer do to help me lose my five pounds? What are things that would

be good?

FRANCINE

GRODSTEIN:

So I do think helping people stay healthy in terms of their diet, in terms of physical activity is

probably one of the major challenges of our age. And we do know that there are lots of ways

to keep people healthy, and that both workplace as well as broader policies can make a big

difference.

A lot has not been done in this country. And if we think, there are wonderful examples, like

cigarette smoking. People say all the time, oh, people won't eat healthy. People won't

exercise. There's nothing we can do. But cigarette smoking is an addictive behavior. And local,

state policy has made a huge difference in bringing down cigarette smoking in this country.

And we really need to do similar things for diet, for exercise to encourage people to do those

things and maintain it as well.

CHRIS ARNOLD: Yeah. I wonder, too-- many workplaces have a little gym somewhere. But is there some-- do

employees still feel guilty sneaking off to the gym? Employers, I imagine, you would say,

should encourage that-- have plans, have office contests-- who can run 100 miles this month,

or something to get people engaged.

FRANCINE

GRODSTEIN:

Exactly. And actually, there is a contest just like that at the School of Public Health. It's a stair

climbing contest.

Because for example, if you look in many buildings in the workplace and outside of the

workplace, the stairs are hidden in some corner, are dark and scary. So even something

simple as making staircases in buildings more tempting to enter, and having contests where

the people have at least some temporary motivation to use stairs, and really incorporate

activity into every part of their life. Many cities have started doing things like increasing bicycle

lanes so that it's easier people for people to bicycle to work, for example. Getting people to

incorporate healthy activities into their daily life certainly is a very good way of trying to

improve our health.

CHRIS ARNOLD: OK. And now we're going to talk about volunteer opportunities. And there's lots of different

ways this could help, obviously. We hear all the time about how public schools in cities are 30

kids to a teacher. It's also, though, difficult to bring people in who aren't educators. How do

you balance volunteering with finding things that people can actually add value and help and

feel useful in? Whoever wants to answer that can go first.

LISA BERKMAN: Let me start, but I think maybe Deborah can finish it. A lot of our work has focused on social

engagement and the health value of volunteering. So it's pretty clear that not being isolated

and being socially engaged in meaningful activities is good for your health through a number a

number of mechanisms, both behavioral ones as well as just stress-reducing ones. So

volunteering is a very important component.

I think, in some ways, it's something that we shouldn't say volunteering or work. Because work

may end up being important for a lot of different reasons, including, as we said, the financial

ones, which are not trivial, even though they both share this social engagement pathway. So

volunteering can be very important. And there are some wonderful studies out there illustrating

it. But maybe Deborah should jump in here. Or I'll keep going. But go ahead.

DEBORAH

WHITMAN:

Sure. I think you're right. I think being engaged as you age, whether it's for pay or not, can

have all kinds of health benefits and benefits to the health of the society and the individual. So

AARP runs a program called Experience Corps through AARP's foundation. And this engages

people over 50 to go into a classroom of third graders. They're given lots of training. And they

help them learn to read. And not only do the readings scores of the students go up

significantly, but it's been well researched and documented it actually helps the cognitive

decline. It helps physically, because many of the older adults live in the community and walk to

the schools. It gives them a sense of purpose. All of these things-- it's a win-win type of a

program. Because we know if kids don't read by the time they get in fourth grade, they're often

not going to graduate high school. So thinking of ways to engage people socially in ways that

helps society.

We're going to have all these-- the largest generation of retirees in history. And how can we

think of ways to make it worth their while, find them opportunities to give back to society is

something that AARP has been really, really committed to do. And this Experience Corps is

one of our crown jewels of the work that we do.

CHRIS ARNOLD: And we're about to go to some questions. I also want to get in a question from the Huffington

Post.

Are there some really good examples where this is working-- cities around the US or around

the world-- where we're seeing just what you're talking about work really well?

DEBORAH

WHITMAN:

Absolutely. And one of the things that AARP engages with is the World Health Organization's

Age Friendly City Program. And this gets local mayors and city councils to commit to looking at

how they provide health care, transportation, housing, socially engage their older residents.

And we have right now 75 US cities-- everything from Boston, where you're sitting right now, to

San Antonio, Texas, Oregon, New York, but small communities, like Macon-Bibb, Georgia, that

have all committed to thinking about how do we put more sidewalks in in areas to get older

people and younger people to walk more? How do we design our transportation system to

help make it easy for people to get to health care when they need it?

I think this movement is really going to transform our country and also help make it an easier

I think this movement is really going to transform our country and also help make it an easier

place to grow old, not just an isolated place.

CHRIS ARNOLD: Great. And we're going to turn to Lisa now, who's got some questions from online, too, I

believe.

LISA MIROWITZ: Great. Thank you. We do have a lot of questions online, so I think we're just going to stick to

taking those today if we can. We've had a lot of questions coming in about age discrimination,

which we started with our clip about, so I'll share one of those.

Older workers are struggling to squeeze a few more years of employment out of their work

lives to have some semblance of retirement, yet they constantly encounter ageism in the hiring

process. The EEOC lacks the legal authority to do much about age discrimination. What needs

to happen to crack down on companies, tech and otherwise, who won't hire older workers for

reasons like they won't be a good cultural fit, or who overtly advertise that they want young

workers or recent college grads or digital natives?

LISA BERKMAN: Well, let me say one thing-- discrimination is a real. It's a very, very important phenomena to

deal with. And it's very, very hard to tackle, because often, it's hard to identify as

discrimination.

So people are up against a very difficult and challenging situation. And the stereotypes that

flow from older workers are often really false and need to be undone by a series of

mechanisms that I think we can collectively play a role in.

The other thing is to point out for companies where they do hire very diverse workforces that

usually diversity is good for the bottom line. In fact, this is a favor for people. Having a diverse

workforce, especially in terms of age and gender, racial ethnic differences, turns out, usually,

to make better products, be efficient for teams. There have been companies, including auto

manufacturers from blue collar teams to very white collar teams, that show that diverse

workforces can be very productive. So it's a double-edged sword, but acknowledging it is step

number one.

DEBORAH

WHITMAN:

I agree with Lisa. And I don't think we can really capture the abilities of our older adults in the

workforce if we don't deal with discrimination. Other countries that are seeing their economy

slow down or the size of their labor force, like Germany, are actively having the employers

engage with a variety of ways to accommodate their workers. So BMW, for example, put in

ergonomic-- all kinds of things to make their programs more ergonomic. So the floors were

softer. People had to lift less. They did this to encourage their older workers to stay on, but

found that it helped the productivity of everyone. They're finding mentorship programs from

their older workers down to younger workers to transfer knowledge.

All of these things are good for a company's bottom line. But we do have so many perceptions

at the hiring manager, at the employer, I think, in this country that really needs a change. And

if we don't, I think the companies will fall behind.

LISA MIROWITZ: Great. Thank you. We've also had a number of questions about disparities coming in, so I just

want to share one of those. This is from Bob [INAUDIBLE]. The unemployment rate of low

income-- i.e. Less than $20,000 per year workers-- ages 55 plus has consistently been three

times greater than the rate for all workers ages 55 plus. For example, in 2014, the age 55-plus

low income, unemployment rate was 13.3% compared to 4.4% for age 55-plus workers as a

whole. What can be done to reduce this great disparity?

CHRIS ARNOLD: That's a tough one to tackle. But does anybody have ideas there?

CHRISTINA MATZ-

COSTA:

There are a lot of-- this is a huge issue. And there are a lot of different possible ways of

approaching it. Figuring out ways to reach and engage individuals who have found either work

or volunteer opportunities to be inaccessible is really important. And we need a lot more

policies to ensure that these types of opportunities are accessible.

Volunteering, for example, is oftentimes a pathway to employment for many people. And so

thinking about how we might provide stipends for individuals so that volunteer opportunities

can be more accessible. That can help to offset the costs to individuals in participating in

volunteer opportunities. The volunteer opportunities can oftentimes provide training, allow

individuals to make social connections that allow them to get work, which is helpful.

Also, supporting federal programs that are targeting low income employees, low income

workers, like the Senior Community Service Employment program, which is an amazing

program that subsidizes employment for older workers. It's really only been able to serve a

very small portion of the older adult population, though. So increase federal dollars toward

programs like that, I think, can help.

LISA BERKMAN: Can I just add one thing? Disparities are an issue that occurs over the life course. You don't

erase them late in life. You have to think about them from the very earliest days.

So if ever there were an issue that involved education, continuing education, job training,

maximizing health early in life to set people up to go through the rest of life-- the ultimate

solution to reductions in inequality and disparities require us to think completely broadly across

the life course, not at the end of a work history.

CHRIS ARNOLD: If you're in the lower income bracket in your 50s, you probably were in your 40s and your 30s.

And somewhere along the line, let's reach people sooner.

Do we have time for a couple more questions? Then we're going to do our round robin.

LISA MIROWITZ: Yes. And I know some of our audience has questions, but perhaps we can address them to

the panelists after the event. We just do have a lot of online questions about social security, so

I do want to get one of those in there as well. This is from Rosemary Keene.

Given that jobs are being eliminated by automation and outsourcing, what are your thoughts

on how to strengthen social security, and how might we return to more reliable pension

systems that are not dependent on the whims of the stock market? Thanks for your

responses.

CHRIS ARNOLD: It's kind of a twofold question there. We start with social security. How secure is it when people

get these things in the mail that I like to open and say, hey, that sounds pretty good. Is that

money going to be there for people? What are we looking at? And I don't know who most

wants to take that one up. Deborah?

DEBORAH

WHITMAN:

Sure. We know that right now, the amount of money coming into social security is not going to

be enough in order to pay full benefits after 2033. And at that point, everybody's benefits will

be cut by about a quarter. Now, that's not that people will receive nothing. But I don't think

anybody wants to see their paycheck cut by a quarter.

And so it's so important that we address the long-term shortfall thinking about ways to make it

sufficient for the next 70 years so that people have the income that they can depend on and

can think about supplementing that with work or with savings or with other pensions.

CHRIS ARNOLD: And I think the second half of that question was interesting, too. It gets at this notion that, look,

our current 401(k) 403(b) retirement plan system was never set up as the retirement solution

for America. It just sort of ended up being that. What are some things we could do to improve--

and we talked a little bit about this earlier-- I think one thing-- reporting that I've done, if you

look at smaller companies, it's very hard for them to navigate how do I set up a good 401(k)

plan for my workers. Even if they have a plan, they don't have a super sophisticated person in

HR who understands all of this stuff.

What can we do to help improve the current system?

DEBORAH

WHITMAN:

Well, the President's budget that came out yesterday allowed employers to pool. I think states

serving that purpose is also a step in the right direction. But it certainly makes sense-- like

Germany, like the UK that you talked about, like so many other countries-- to do this at the

federal level so that people who live in one state and move to another don't have to have

disruptive systems. We should have a national program of saving to make it easy for people

that's low cost, easy to understand, and that can last their whole lifetime.

LISA MIROWITZ: Thank you.

CHRIS ARNOLD: OK. So now we're going to get one last chance to-- actually, when I do interviews, I always ask

this question at the end of an interview. So what's the most important part of this entire thing

for each of you? And if there's one policy takeaway, to frame the question that way, what

would you like to leave people with? You can start.

LISA BERKMAN: For me, the bottom line is work needs to be redesigned, organizationally redesigned. And that

will take both corporate responsibility for corporations thinking about what's best for them and

their employees, but will also take public policy as well to pull two things together to face the

coming transition.

CHRISTINA MATZ-

COSTA:

From my perspective, I think that there's three primary challenges that we need to think about

when we're thinking about policies and programs to support increasing productive aging. And

that's inclusion. So what types of programs, innovative programs, policies can we think of to

make sure that older adults who are of lower socioeconomic status, caregivers who have

disabilities, are included in productive activities, the intersection of competing productive

activities-- so thinking about how to mitigate the tension between caregiving and working and

volunteering-- and thirdly, the cumulative disadvantage that Lisa referred to.

So thinking about, over the course of one's lifetime, what can we do to ensure that productive

activity is supported so that when people do get to older ages, there are more opportunities

available.

FRANCINE Do you want to do me?

GRODSTEIN:

CHRIS ARNOLD: Sure. Go ahead.

FRANCINE

GRODSTEIN:

So I think it is critically important to remind people that if they want to be productive and

engaged as they get older, that having a healthy lifestyle when they're younger will be very

important to maintaining their memory, maintaining their health, maintaining their well-being.

And if we do want to be active when we get older, we have to start thinking about it when we're

somewhat younger.

And although as a society we haven't done a great job yet at learning how to promote health

and diet and physical activity, it is something we can achieve, and it should be a bigger part of

all of our everyday lives.

CHRIS ARNOLD: And Deborah is the head policy person at the AARP. What are a couple of key policy

takeaways from you?

DEBORAH

WHITMAN:

I have a whole bunch, but I will stick it to this-- you talked about the fourth quarter being the

best quarter. And I think we have to really reorientate the lifespans that we have. Right now,

we spend the first quarter or 1/3 educating. We spend the middle half working, and we spent

the last quarter in what's called economics leisure, or retirement, or whatever you want to

frame it.

But I think more people would like to break that down. So maybe we need education going a

little bit later in life sometimes. We need some of that free time not just and the end of life, but

at the time when we have young kids or have caregiving responsibilities. We have the gift of

time. That's the beauty of our societies living longer. But what we need to think about is the

systems that are flexible enough about how we use them. And I think there's a variety of ways

to do that. But I think envisioning not this same scenario that we we've had for so long, but one

that allows us to vary as we age, whether we're working, whether educating, whether we're

taking some time off, can make it a really, productive lifespan.

CHRIS ARNOLD: I think that's a super interesting answer. And we'll have to do an NPR story on that, I think, at

some point. Listen, thanks to all the panelists for coming. I'd like to make sure that people tune

into the next forum, which is going to be on chemical exposures in the brain, the Flint water

crisis, and more. That will be Friday, February 19th, at a special time, noon to 1:00 PM.

And that is what we have for the forum. So thank you for coming today. Thanks again to all of

our panelists and the people who are here. Sorry we didn't get to your questions, but stick

around and we'll stay and answer them for you now.

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