The chart has nothing to do with the economic/job force implications of the retirement of baby boomers.
In fact if your interpretation of that graph was supportive of your point, you wouldn't be reading the contradiction of your' belief', below!
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-baby...s-economy/
In fact if your interpretation of that graph was supportive of your point, you wouldn't be reading the contradiction of your' belief', below!
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-baby...s-economy/
Quote:What Baby Boomers’ Retirement Means For the U.S. Economy
By Ben Casselman
For decades, the retirement of the baby boom generation has been a looming economic threat. Now, it’s no longer looming — it’s here. Every month, more than a quarter-million Americans turn 65. That’s a trend with profound economic consequences.
Simply put, retirees don’t contribute as much to the economy as workers do. They don’t produce anything, at least directly. They don’t spend as much on average. And they’re much more likely to depend on others — the government or their own children, most often — than to support themselves.
Now that the wave has begun, nothing is likely to stop it. The Census Bureau on Tuesday released a pair of reports that show just how dramatic an impact the graying of the population will have in coming decades.
Nearly a quarter of Americans were born between 1946 and 1964, the typical definition of the baby boom generation. That’s more than 75 million people. In their heyday, the boomers were an
unprecedented economic force, pushing up rates of homeownership, consumer spending and, most important of all, employment.
It’s no coincidence that the U.S. labor force participation rate — the share of the adult population that has a job or is trying to find one — hit a record high in the late 1990s, when the boomers were at the peak of their working lives.
It’s been downhill ever since. The participation rate hit a 36-year low last month, and while there are multiple reasons for the decline, the aging of the baby boom generation is a dominant factor. In 2003, 82 percent of boomers were part of the labor force; a decade later, that number has declined to 66 percent, and it will only continue to fall.
All else equal, fewer workers means less economic growth. One way to measure this is a figure known as the “dependency ratio,” or the number of people outside of working age (under 18 or over 64) per 100 adults between age 18 and 64.2 The higher the ratio, the worse the news: If more of the population is young or old that leaves fewer working-age people to support them and contribute to the economy.
