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Prehistoric folks had a life expectancy of eighteen. But this brief span was world enough and time for reproduction and survival of the human species. They died too young to have a legal drink, but they had quite enough life span to discover fire and invent the wheel. A handful of twenty-year-old elders was sufficient to pass along a modicum of culture-how to organize the hunting and gathering, how to extract not only food, clothing, and shelter from dead game, how to bury the bodies. Over the next several millennia, as life expectancy crept up to thirty, there was plenty of time to be Alexander the Great, Jesus, or Mozart.
Fast-forward to 1946, the year I was born, and life expectancy was sixty-seven-approaching the Biblical three score and ten-quite enough time to invent the computer, triumph over Fascism, and replace swing with bebop. People considerately exited before becoming demographic undesirables to TV advertisers. You could briefly savor your life achievements in full command of your senses and then leave the scene.
So what's the meaning of the extra twenty or thirty years we have attained since my birth?
This question came to mind reading a piece in the Wall Street Journal, "Retiree Havens Turn Younger to Combat the Housing Bust" (December 28, 2008). The article focuses on the growing number of vacancies in the so-called active adult communities such as Century Village or Sun City. Typically, these enclaves require buyers to be at least 55 years old, and ban children under 19 as permanent residents. Lowering the age requirement is a way of expanding the market and reducing financial stress on the communities. The fewer the residents, the less money there is for mowing the lawn, cleaning the pools, and paying for the staff at the clubhouse. For people younger than 55, the attraction-along with the swimming pools, and the weight rooms unused by 80 somethings-is the comparatively reasonable prices of the adult communities. For example, in Century Village, Deerfield Beach, Florida, a two-bedroom condo goes for $40,000, quite a bargain even in the reduced state of today's housing market.
As a psychologist who works with the elderly in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, I was less interested in the economics of the situation than this comment from a retired physicist in an adult community in Massachusetts, "we want to live with people our own age and interests." Younger people "would change the general complexion of our community."
Retirement communities are a very recent development on the time-line of human history.
In traditional societies, elders are leaders and teachers. If they wanted to live by themselves, they would be unproductive mouths to feed. In nomadic societies when you become too frail and elderly, they move on and leave you behind. This perhaps is an ironic analog of modern elders segregating themselves in retirement communities; rather than being left behind, they leave the rest of us behind.
The idea of retirement itself and living out your days among elderly peers is a recent invention and artifact of the rise of a large middle class amid the widespread post World War II prosperity. It is no accident that retirement communities like Sun City followed soon after suburban developments like Levittown.
But it would be a mistake to think that most elders either desire to or can afford to live in a gilded cage.
According to the last U.S. census in 2001, only 10 percent of people under the age of 79 live in housing specifically built for the older people. For those between 80 and 84, the number rises only to 13 percent. And for those aged 85 or older only, it's only 19 percent.
These findings closely mirror a 2004 survey of pre-retirees-500 responses from 50-65 year olds-conducted by The MetLife Mature Market Institute and AARP Health Care Options. Almost all wanted to live in their own homes. Even if they were to require some kind of ongoing assistance, almost half would prefer to receive it in their own homes.
A large chunk of those surveyed were by age my fellow baby boomers-a generation that has stereotypically wanted and expected it all. I wonder if my parents' generation-my parents did move to Century Village-would have shared these more recent attitudes. The children of the Depression first wanted to move to the suburbs and then to the senior version of the suburbs-"active adult communities."
But my contemporaries are reversing this trend. People who raised their families in suburbs are foregoing golf and swimming pools to move into cities to be near art galleries and concert halls. There are even new high-rise adult communities being built to meet this demand. Although most in the MetLive/AARP survey wanted to live at home, and not move, adult communities were the second choice. A luxurious high-rise community such as Chicago's Gold Coast Clare at Water Tower has hotel-style amenities along with and medical services characteristic of an assisted living center-combining the lure of the big city with the helping hand of a home health aide. But this is not an option for everyone. Entry fees range from $500,000 to more than $1 million, with monthly maintenance ranging from two to four thousand, not something you can do on your Social Security check. More likely for most is a place like the Bella Vista in New Haven-monthly fees of less than a thousand, the public bus to downtown, but with beautiful views of the harbor. Being over 55, I joke to my wife that I'm headed there after-let's call it-an animated discussion.
So, in the end, the financial bust and the opening of sales to those under 55 at Century Village is a case of back to the future. As some old folk are moving out of their retirement communities to rejoin the world at large, young folk are moving out of the city to fill up those vacancies.
Count me among those who would like to stay where I am. "Age in place," as we geriatric types like to say.
Or as one woman in her seventies exclaimed to me after she moved into her gilded cage at a posh active adult community: "I didn't realize these people would be so old!"
