Only 20% of men are working past age 65

WASHINGTON — Senior citizens are leaving the labor force sooner than they did 50 years ago, even though they are living longer, healthier lives, according to a landmark analysis of census data released Thursday.

This is one of several surprising findings in the report on aging, which comes as the first baby boomers are nearing retirement age. The oldest baby boomers turn 60 this year, and the new report suggests that many of them already have left the labor force.

The report attributes the declining work rate among older Americans to the growth in private pensions and Social Security and Medicare benefits. As benefits for older Americans grew in the last half of the 20th century, fewer saw the need to work beyond age 65, said Mitra Toossi, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That may change as more companies turn away from guaranteed pensions and Social Security and Medicare face substantial deficits in coming decades.

While almost half of men 65 and older worked or looked for work in 1950, fewer than 20 percent were in the labor force by 2003.

Women are working in much larger numbers earlier in life, but among those 65 and older, their participation in the labor force has remained steady at around 10 percent since 1950.

Older Americans are wealthier and better educated than ever, but the expected doubling of the elderly population by 2030 will create profound social and economic challenges, according to the report commissioned by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The report offers no new research but assembles information from a variety of census surveys and federal statistical sources, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Medicare claims.

There were 662,148 people over 65 (11.2 percent of the population) in Washington state in 2000. According to American Demographics, the Seattle/Tacoma/Bellevue metro area had 335,414 (10.5 percent of the population) people age 65 or over in 2005. This number is projected to rise to 390,775 (11.7 percent of the population) by 2010. That translates to a 16.5 percent projected increase in five years.

Overall, there are about 35 million Americans age 65 and over, a number that is projected to more than double by 2030, the report said. About 59 percent of seniors are women.

The oldest portion of the population — those 85 and older — will also double during that period, reaching 9.6 million. Likewise, the number who have celebrated their 100th birthday increased from 37,000 in 1990 to more than 50,000 a decade later. It will grow further in years to come.

These changes coincide with a steady rise in life expectancy, which reached an all-time high of 77 years in 2000, compared with 70.8 years in 1970 and just 47.3 years in 1900.

Officials attribute much of this to far lower mortality rates for heart disease. But they warn that as the population ages, more people will suffer the mental debilitation of Alzheimer's disease, which today costs society $100 billion a year.

"This report tells us that we have made a lot of progress in improving the health and well-being of older Americans, but there is much left to do," NIA Director Richard Hodes said in a statement.

Among men 65 and older, the percentage still in the labor force bottomed out in the 1980s and increased slightly since then. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the percentage to rise only slightly in the future, never again reaching the levels of 50 years ago.

"Not too long ago, people, particularly men, worked until they were physically unable to work," said Robert Friedland, director of the Center on an Aging Society at Georgetown University. "Now, people have a period of time to which they are looking forward."

But they can look forward to retirement only if they are financially prepared, said Friedland, who noted that $1 million in a retirement account isn't that much to live on if you'll be around another 20 or 30 years.

Improved benefits played a bigger role in retirement plans than the fact that workers were living longer, Toossi said.

But the biggest benefit programs face problems. Private pension systems have been defaulting at an alarming rate. Many companies are abandoning pension plans that guarantee benefits based on years of service and age at retirement.

Medicare, which just added a prescription-drug benefit, faces insolvency in 2020, according to the trust fund that runs it. Social Security, if left alone, is projected to go broke in 2041.

People over 65 live with fewer disabilities than in years past, but that often means taking multiple medications and depending on pacemakers and other devices.

And despite the unprecedented wealth of today's 65-and-older population, in 2003 the poverty rate among seniors was 10 percent. But that's lower than the 12.5 percent rate for the general population, and it's a big change from 1959, when more than a third of seniors lived below the poverty level, according to the report.

One troubling finding: 40 percent of older black and Hispanic women who live alone also live in poverty.

Dr. Richard M. Suzman, associate director of behavioral research at the aging institute, also warned that rising obesity among the young could reverse health gains.

"There's a dark cloud out there," he said. "Some have estimated that the increase in obesity could neutralize the positive trends in the future. It's likely to have more of an impact on disability than on life expectancy."

In a separate study, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that half of all people 65 and older have three or more chronic illnesses, and 20 percent have five or more. These include diabetes, hypertension, clogged arteries and arthritis — each of which can require medications.

"Many of these aren't things that are going to kill you dead, at least not for a while," said Dr. Albert Wu, a senior author and a professor of health policy and management. "But you may need a pacemaker, you may need a defibrillator and some stents in your vessels. These are ... better than the alternative — but all these things come at a price."

Seattle Times researcher Gene Balk contributed to this report.