Grays on The Go

No one ever expected America to age gracefully. How could the country of adolescent spirit, reckless politics, marathons, short skirts, unbounded energy and a restless imagination admit that its body is growing old? Not with Ronald Reagan in the saddle at 77. Or Joe Niekro, a starting pitcher at 43, fluttering knuckle balls past cross-eyed youngsters on a Saturday afternoon. Or Dr. Jonas Salk, 73, who developed the first polio vaccine 35 years ago, searching for an AIDS vaccine. Or Elizabeth Taylor at 55, flashing a luscious violet smile from a magazine cover. We don't have to slow down, they seem to say. Why should you?

It may be that, with all the willfulness of youth, America is finding a new way to grow old. Far from fading away, the elderly seem to be brightening on the horizons of the mind, the family, the workplace, the community. Everywhere their role and presence are changing. Politicians rush to court the gray vote. Corporations and charities plumb a deeply skilled, reliable labor resource among the used-to-be and not-yet-ready-to-be retired. Madison Avenue prepares to tap a vast, long-ignored market. Where once the image of the elderly was of frailty, there are now energy and curiosity, courses to take, choirs to join, diets to break, children to counsel, battles to fight, whims to follow.

But with these come other, less cheering images and prospects. Among them is the still haunting presence of the elderly poor, most of them widows, many of them black, collapsing into a safety net that cannot support their weight. The well-being of America's senior citizens, though far greater than 20 years ago, is by no means universal. Many are sick and getting sicker, as health care becomes prohibitively expensive. Every year, as the baby boomers age and the nation's center of gravity shifts upward, the allocation of resources becomes ever more difficult and the potential for conflict between generations ever greater.

Budget-conscious policymakers must already balance the competing claims of education, child-care and welfare programs against Medicare, catastrophic health insurance and numerous benefits for the elderly. With each advance in medical technology, doctors and ethicists wrestle over how long people should be kept alive and how to ration health care between the young and the very old. And closest to home, many "sandwich" families will feel a terrible strain as they try to raise their children and sustain their parents on a squeezed household budget.

In many ways, America is not yet ready for a vast social change that came upon it rather suddenly. "It used to be," says Ken Dychtwald, a young, blunt-spoken gerontologist in Emeryville, Calif., "that people didn't age. They died." When the Republic was founded, a newborn child could expect to reach 35. Today Americans could well live into their 90s -- and live well too. In 1950 people 65 and over made up just 7.7% of the population. Now the number is up to 12%, and it will reach 17.3% by 2020. Fastest growing of all is the group 85 and over. By 1995 the population of the average U.S. town will look like Florida's population today.