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Boomers' Key to Long Life? Volunteering, Study Says
June 16, 2004, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

By STEWART M. POWELL

The nation's 77 million post-World War II "baby boomers" can live longer, happier lives by trading leisure in their golden years for volunteer community service, according to a study released this week by the Harvard School of Public Health and the MetLife Foundation.

The two organizations also announced they were launching a national campaign to encourage boomers to volunteer with service organizations when they retire - and to prepare those organizations to take advantage of new volunteers.

Jay Winsten, associate dean of the Harvard School of Public Health and director of the school's center for health communication, said the campaign will be modeled after successful efforts to persuade Americans to adopt the "designated driver" program to help cut drunken-driving deaths and adult mentoring of youths to reduce youth violence and drug use.

"For those baby boomers who head to the health club each week, civic engagement in retirement is the next health club in terms of maintenance of fitness, good health and longevity," Winsten told a conference of experts convened to discuss the implications of the Harvard study.

The baby boom generation - those born between 1946 and 1964 - begins reaching the retirement age of 65 in 2011 with an average additional life expectancy of 18 more years after that.

Winsten said he hopes their retirement will expand the so-called "volunteer" sector in the nation's $10 trillion-plus economy beyond almost 84 million volunteers doing almost 16 billion hours of volunteer work each year worth $239 billion a year.

The baby boomers represent "a growing resource of time, energy and talent with the potential to competently address community problems nationwide through volunteer work and employment," the study said.

But Winsten warned that volunteer service organizations needed to revamp their appeals and in some cases change their organizations in order to enlist baby boomers who are independent, self-starters, impatient, willful and are "not likely to take kindly to invitations to stuff envelopes."

Winsten added: "Without careful planning and without the infusion of new resources, there is a real danger that we as a nation may squander the opportunity that is offered by this cadre of aging boomers that is heading our way."

Marc Freedman, president of Civic Ventures that works to expand volunteering by older Americans, said retirees may want to model their post-career lives after former President Jimmy Carter, who left the White House in 1981.

"Here's a guy who won the ambition game in life, absolutely, by ascending to president of the United States," said Freedman, author of "Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America." "But he discovered that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and it turned out (his presidency) was a prelude to the really important work that he felt was closest to his heart."

Carter has engaged in a variety of volunteer activities since his presidency, including building homes for the poor, monitoring elections in underdeveloped countries and negotiating peace agreements or peaceful transitions, including the peaceful U.S. occupation of Haiti in 1994.

Freedman said the campaign should transform not only baby boomers' expectations for their own retirements but also replace some analysts' gloomy portrayals of baby boomers as a "long gray wave of greedy geezers coming into their long-tooth years to take America to the cleaners."

W. Wilson Goode Sr., a former mayor of Philadelphia now serving as senior adviser on the Bush administration-backed Faith-Based Initiatives for Public/Private Ventures, said the campaign would help retiring baby boomers address the question of "how do you move from success to significance?"

Many older Americans have found volunteer community activities to be the best way to "be remembered for your life's work," Goode said, adding that many older Americans want to "sprint across the finish line by giving back and giving service."

The Harvard-based effort will include a national advertising campaign that urges retirees to "balance your portfolio" by adding volunteer community service to post-career planning.

"What are you going to do with the rest of your life?" will be the question posed to future retirees, Winsten said.

"And our answer will encourage people to, 'Share what you know' with your local community to help strengthen American society," Winsten added.