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Winter 2004-05 Our Guest EditorsComing to terms with the reality of a rapidly aging society is more than ever putting questions about later life--particularly the financial aspects--at the center of public and private discourse, as we have daily proof. In this issue of Generations, Neal E. Cutler and Sandra Timmermann, uniquely qualified as quest editors for this topic, examine the mutual relationship between business and aging, with special focus on "silver industries," those businesses and services that are likely to grow along with the burgeoning older population. Neal Cutler was one of the first political scientists in aging and more recently has been at the forefront of the new field of financial gerontology. Sandra Timmermann is a nationally recognized gerontologist and the director of the Mature Market Institute at MetLife. Each is dedicated to developing ways that gerontologists and others who study aging and run programs and services for older people can work together with those in business for mutual benefit and for the good of an aging population. With Sandra Timmermann as its director, the Mature Market Institute at MetLife is the financial sevices and insurance company's information and policy resource center for issues concerning aging, retirement, long-term care, and the "mature market." Before joining MetLife, Timmermann, who had twenty-five years of experience in the field of aging, held positions with AARP, the American Society on Aging, and SeniorNet. Earlier, she worked with corporate clients as an account supervisor in public relations and marketing agencies. She has a doctorate and is a specialist in older adult education. "You can see that I've had a foot in both camps," Timmermann says. "I was brought into Metlife because of my knowledge of aging, and I was able to apply my knowledge effectively because I'd worked in business already--I knew and appreciated that sector. Some people wondered if I would be comfortable in business after working in social-service and academic settings. But I felt that business hadn't been on the radar screen in the world I'd been working in for so long. Yet elders are retirees and employees. They buy products and services and, like all of us, depend on business to keep the economy going. It was a two-way contribution I could make: I felt I could represent the best interests of the aging population and also show the ways that this is in the best interests of business." With this goal in mind, Timmermann leads the institute in provision of research, training and education, and consultation and information to support MetLife and its business partners in their aging-related endeavors. She writes a Financial Gerontology column for the Journal of Financial Service Professionals and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars. She also serves on the boards of directors of the National Alliance for Caregiving, the Southwestern Connecticut Agency on Aging, and the American Society on Aging, for which she is chair of the Business Forum on Aging. "I try to translate as much as I can," Timmermann says. "Business needs a solid picture of what people are going through at different stages of life: the dynamics of caring for an older parent and also what that means about how people plan for their own long-term care. From the inside of good businesses, you can see that there is a real concern about doing the right thing. "Business has many opportunities that can come from serving older people well. The key is that they can make money by providing excellent products and services that meet a real need. If the products aren't any good, people aren't going to buy them. Businesses have just begun to realize that not all older people have high incomes--in fact, it's quite the contrary. These people need products and services too. In the future, I look for a more universal approach, the acknowledgment that people across the lifespan, in all kinds of situations, need and deserve good products and services. It can be a win-win situation." Neal Cutler has been a researcher and teacher for more than three decades--first as a political gerontologist on the West Coast and, more recently, as a financial gerontologist on the East Coast. He currently holds the Boettner/Gregg Chair in Financial Gerontology at Widener University, with a joint appointment in the School of Human Service Professions and the School of Business Administration. From 1973 to 1989 he held a joint appointment as professor of political science and of gerontology at the University of Southern California and was associate director of the Andrus Gerontology Center's Institute for Advanced Study in Gerontology and Geriatrics. "I really haven't left political science," Cutler says, speaking of the discipline in which he earned his doctorate. "Financial gerontology is social policy. In fact you see how it all comes together in the current campaign to transform Social Security from a guaranteed pension into an uncertain mutual fund account--politics, finance, demographics, gerontology, social policy. The question is not, 'Is this a good change?' but rather 'Under what circumstances, and for whom is it a bad or a good change?' In this vein, I want to extend my work in the area of financial literacy, both in understanding what the public knows and doesn't know and in evaluating evidence-based strategies to raise the level of that understanding." Toward that end, Cutler has engaged in such endeavors as the recent Widener Symposium, "Managing Transformations in an Aging Society: Health, Wealth, and Work" and is a founder and vice president of the American Institute of Financial Gerontology, which provides specialized gerontological training to qualified financial services professionals, leading to the Registered Financial Gerontologist designation. Among his many publications are such titles as Can You Afford to Retire? (1992) and Advising Mature Clients: The New Science of Wealth Span Planning, (2002). He is an associate editor of the Journal of Financial Service Professionals and was editor of Financial Gerontology Review, a publication of the National Institute of Financial Services for Elders. "Financial literacy is definitely at the heart of the current Social Security debate in an important way, " Cutler says. "It's not really a young-versus-old issue, as some would like to claim--lots of middle-aged and older people care about younger people and vice versa. It could be a rich-versus-poor issue, and it's definitely about what people know. You can't generalize about 76 million boomers. There are only so many wealthy, educated, financially literate older people who want to and are able to manage their own accounts. What about everyone else? We need to communicate what we learn as researchers and reformulate as teachers to those whose own aims are to improve the quality of life of aging men and women."- Mary Johnson
From Generations Winter 2004 issue, 28(4): 4. © 2004 American Society on Aging
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