GBO NEWS: Dartmouth Atlas Phone Briefing on Wed.; AARP Takes Purpose Prize Over; CBO’s Social Security Flub; Retirement Crisis; Hugh Downs at 95 & More
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations
February 15, 2016 — Volume 16, Number 2
Editor’s Note: GBO News, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generation publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. You can subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge simply by sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. You’ll receive the table of contents as e-mail, just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org.
IN THIS ISSUE: Happy Year of the Angry Presidential Monkey. (“Gung Hay Fat Cats.”)
1. THE STORYBOARD: *** Time’s Phillip Moeller says the Congressional Budget Office corrected a key error in the 2016 presidential debate on the future of Social Security; *** “Disparity in Life Spans of the Rich and the Poor Is Growing” by NYT’s Sabrina Tavernise
2. MEDIA BRIEFING ALERT: This Wed., Feb. 17 Dartmouth Atlas phone-in briefing to release first “report card” on quality of care older people
3. EYES ON THE PRIZE: Columbia University’s Age Boom Journalism Fellowship Deadline, March 4; ***Encore.org’s Purpose Prize Moving to AARP
4. RETIREMENT’S OH-OH FACTOR: “When Retirement Becomes a Crisis,” by MIT Age Lab’s Joseph Coughlin and Luke Yoquinto in Slate (Feb. 2), says boomers’ retirement could “cripple” such fields as air traffic control, farming and geriatrics.
5. GEN BEATLES NEWS: ***A 95th Valentine’s Birthday Shoutout to Broadcast Legend & Gerontologist Hugh Downs; ***New Yorker story recognizes investigative journalist James Ridgeway “Solitary Watch” helping abused prisoners.
1. THE STORYBOARD
*** GOP Candidates May Feel a Burn this week following the Congressional Budget Office’s admission of an seemingly small statistical error that proponents jumped at recently to prove their case for cutting Social Security benefits for middle-class seniors.
Time/Money’s Philip Moeller reports that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has admitted its calculations late last year, which figured prominently in policy-wonk debates between cutting or expanding the nation’s pension program “were flawed and that it was publishing revised estimates of replacement rates.”
Moeller ledes, “A dispute over measuring the adequacy of Social Security benefits is heating up against the backdrop of a 2016 Presidential election featuring candidates with wildly differing agendas for the program.”
He explains, “One of the key pieces of ammunition in that debate will be what’s known as the income replacement rate—essentially, the percentage of the money that Americans earned before they retired that will be ‘replaced’ by their Social Security benefits.” For years, the Social Security Administration estimated pre-retirement income (average career earnings adjusted for past wage inflation) at a bit less than 40 percent, and declining for a typical retiree.
But in 2015, CBO revised its approach in a report, asserting that a more accurate calculation than using average lifetime earnings would be to examine the earnings of people in the years right before they retired.
“This new set of numbers,” Moeller explains, “yielded much higher replacement rates: 60 percent for a typical worker born in the 1940s,” and 56 percent for those born in the 1960s and retiring in the 2020s. CBO also calculated the poorest retirees would receive 95 percent of what they’d been earning before leaving the workforce. (Remember that although the payroll tax is “regressive,” paid like a sales tax at the same percentage for everyone, benefits are paid back to Americans on a “progressive” basis, with a higher percentage going to those who earned lower incomes.)
Fellow news-hounds, stop just a moment and think about how you’d get by on about 60 percent of your income vs. the long-estimated 40 percent. Taking out workaday expenses like lunch, transportation and so on, retirement experts say people need around 60-80 percent of pre-retirement income to maintain your pre-retirement standard of living. At 40 percent, the U.S. system has one of the lower replacement rates in the industrialized world because this country decided Social Security would provide an income floor to keep people above poverty, and that citizens should then build on that with their savings and private pensions–both of which have materialized for fewer and fewer Americans.
Based on CBO’s new calculation, though, conservative Social Security expert Andrew Biggs wrote a Wall Street Journal piece (Jan. 4, 2016) headlined, “New Evidence on the Phony ‘Retirement Crisis.’” CBO’s much higher replacement rate, Biggs said, proves that liberals overstate the looming strain on retirement income security and actually support arguments for reducing Social Security benefits. Moeller was skeptical.
When he called CBO about it last month, Moeller writes, “I was politely shown the door.” But he also contacted economist and former U.S. Treasury official, Alicia Munnell, head of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, who shared his skepticism. Says Moeller, a mere journalist and coauthor of a bestselling book on retirement, “I’m guessing Munnell or another influential doubter convinced the agency to take another look at its numbers. When it did, that 60 percent replacement rate became only 43 percent—only a bit higher than the SSA’s number.”
He concludes, “For consumers, if Social Security indeed replaces only about 40 percent of the typical beneficiary’s preretirement income, where will the rest of the money they need come from? As the latest stock-market swoon has reminded us, private retirement investment accounts aren’t a reliable answer. This makes the role of Social Security benefits more important than ever.”
For another take on this, see “Strike Three for the Congressional Budget Office? Social Security Retirement Income Projections,” in the Beat the Press (Feb. 11) blog by Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He writes, “ While this was a serious error, unfortunately it was not the first time that CBO had made a major error in an authoritative publication.”
*** “Disparity in Life Spans of the Rich and the Poor Is Growing,” by Sabrina Tavernise New York Times (Feb. 13) reports on a new book-length study from researchers at the Brookings Institution revealing more about longevity inequality in the United States – including it’s consequences for Social Security.
According to Tavernise, the Brookings report, Later Retirement, Inequality in Old Age and The Growing Gap in Longevity Between Rich and Poor, shows, “Despite big advances in medicine, technology and education, the longevity gap between high-income and low-income Americans has been widening sharply. The poor are losing ground not only in income, but also in years of life.”
2. MEDIA BRIEFING ALERT
*** This Wed., Feb. 17, The Dartmouth Atlas will release its first-of-its-kind “report card” on the quality of care older people in a media-only phone-in conference starting at 2 p.m. EST (Call in: (844) 471-0802; Passcode: 50868274). Unlike previous Dartmouth Atlas studies, which have compared cost data for medical treatments, the new analysis examines actual procedures—and it does so with searchable maps and statistics reporters can use to localize stories.
The report, “Our Parents, Ourselves: Health Care for an Aging Population,” promises to provide a comprehensive look at the quality of care older people are receiving, noting variations in the 306 Medicare hospital regions in the U.S. It uses Medicare data to scrutinize the number of days Medicare beneficiaries spend in contact with the health care system, rates of mammogram and PSA tests, feeding tube placements for those with advanced dementia, as well as rates of high risk medication prescription rates, 30-day readmissions, annual wellness visits, and many other factors.
The conference call, which, again, is for media only, will features the report’s lead author Julie P.W. Bynum, MD, MPH, associate professor of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice, and Terry Fulmer, PhD, FAAN, RN, president of The John A. Hartford Foundation, the report’s sponsor. Reporters interested in an advance embargoed copy of “Our Parents, Ourselves” can contact Elliott Walker at ewalker@aboutscp.com.
3. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** Columbia University’s Age Boom Fellowship Deadline, March 4: One of the prime journalism fellowships in aging is the prestigious Age Boom Academy, offered by Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center. Roughly 20 reporters interested in generational issues will be selected to attend an expenses-paid seminar in New York City. The application deadline is Friday, March 4. This year’s sponsor is the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
With this year’s theme, “The Future of Retirement and Work,” the program is set to start the evening of Thurs., June 9, and continue through Sat., June 11, at Columbia Journalism School. The program will offer two days of lectures and panels with leading experts on aging, work and retirement.
The program release promises to address such questions as: Who can afford to retire? Who is it reasonable in this time of rising longevity to increase the retirement age? How would later retirement affect different people—groups with lower life expectancy or those who do physical labor? How do employers handle their aging workforces? How do older adults wish to spend their post-retirement years?
The program is designed for local/regional reporters and national correspondents covering aspects of aging, work, and retirement. Freelancers and staff reporters can apply. The fellowship covers travel, lodging and attendance fees. The application form is posted online. For more information, visit ageboom.columbia.edu.
The late Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Bob Butler, MD, who coined the term “ageism,” developed the Age Boom Academy in the 1990s and launched it in 2000. Butler, the leading voice in gerontology and geriatric medicine for a generation, was also devoted to supporting the coverage of issues in aging.
*** Purpose Prize Moving to AARP: After a decade, Encore.org is handing its $100,000 Purpose Prize for social entrepreneurs ages 60-plus over to AARP. Encore founder Marc Freedman made the announcement in San Francisco Feb. 9 at Encore’s annual conference and presentation of the 2015 Purpose Prizes. Under AARP’s management, eligibility for the prize and fellowships will be a decade younger, at age 50.
Meanwhile, Talking Eyes Media, which has produced the video and text profiles of the winners for seven years, has launched the 10th Anniversary Purpose Prize website showing the rich and purposeful work. Encore has recognized more than 500 individuals, a few receiving top award from $100,000 to $10,000, for creating or enhancing public-benefit organizations addressing often-unsung issue like infant safety to veteran homelessness. Encore has awarded more than $5 million. But more than that the program developed a network of older social doers, including many selected Fellows flown in to link with other nonprofit innovators.
Encore Executive VP Jim Emerman, who was key to designing and managing the Purpose Prize, e-mailed GBONews that the nonprofit’s founder, Marc Freedman, is working on his next Encore. (He’s one of the most serial and successful of social entrepreneurs around.) This summer he will launch a new campaign “to mobilize boomers to take action on behalf of at-risk kids.”
Meanwhile, Emerman said he’s continuing to work with the extensive network of Encore Fellows, managing retirement research projects designing a new set of prizes to recognize innovation in organizations that help connect people wanting encores careers “with opportunities to turn that aspiration into action.”
The new website includes profiles of all winners and fellows, such as the six honored last week. Their work addresses at-risk youth, health access, women in poverty, and farmworkers’ rights. One, for instance, is Laurie Ahern, 61, a former journalist who created Disability Rights International. The non-governmental organization has investigated and exposed abuses in orphanages in 36 countries. To learn more about her and the other five current winners, visit the new website. [http://purposeprize.encore.org]
4. THE OH-OH FACTOR: RETIREMENT? WHAT ABOUT REPLACEMENT?
*** “When Retirement Becomes a Crisis,” [http://tinyurl.com/jo7rhad] Slate (Feb. 2), should be a final boarding call for reporters writing on retirement issues. And the commentary’s authors are especially well qualified to announce it. Joseph Coughlin founded and directs MIT’s AgeLab [http://agelab.mit.edu/] and leads the University Transportation Center at the Institute’s Center for Transportation and Logistics, and Luke Yoquinto is a science/technology writer and research associate at the AgeLab.
Their blog states, “As baby boomers leave the workforce, professions like air traffic controller, farmer, and geriatrician could be crippled.” Take air traffic controllers: When President Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 of them for striking in 1981, the government replaced them with people who were all about the same age. Now add 35 years.
Coughlin and Yoquinto cite “an alarming report” released in January from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s inspector general arguing that, in future years the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) won’t easily be able to keep trained and experienced eyes on radar screens. The MIT writers stress that even back in 1981, “Anyone capable of simple math could have seen the issue coming: New hires, all roughly the same age, would eventually retire at roughly the same time. But then and now, very little was done.”
The article notes that shortages are of little concern in low-training fields, such as postal work, or desirable fields with high barriers to entry, especially the personal-tech sector, investment banking or some medical specializations like dermatology that attract many new workers every year.
But, the writers go on, vital jobs “that are less than sexy and have high barriers to entry are now practically begging for trained workers. Within medicine, general practitioners and, ironically, geriatricians fall into this category.” In particular, they spotlight agriculture, where principal farm owners average age 58, and rapidly aging workers in energy production–and primary care medicine, including geriatrics. The state, it all “adds up to a system that’s not flexible enough to respond to the sudden changes that are very likely on the way.”
The MIT pair emphasize, “Perhaps the most striking thing about the waves of retirements now facing the U.S. is how predictable it all has been” in both the neglectful governmental and private sectors.
Coughlin and Yoquinto conclude, “But the bulk of the issue is far is simpler: We don’t like to think about old age and what it means. The media generally doesn’t want to cover it, and people don’t want to read about it. It’s just a little too real and makes us just a little too uncomfortable.”
5. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** A 95th Valentine’s Birthday Shoutout to Hugh Downs, born Feb. 14, 1921: Aside from being, “among the most familiar figures in the history” of television, according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications.
Downs, also the namesake of Arizona State University’s Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, occupies a special place in the heart of the age beat. He actually earned a special certificate in geriatric medicine from New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Although not many Millennials may recall his name—and all in journalism should learn of him—Downs’ had them much in mind when he published his eight book, Letter to a Great Grandson: A Message of Love, Advice, and Hopes for the Future (Scribner, 2004).
Gerontologist Harry “Rick” Moody recently interviewed Downs for his excellent Human Values in Aging Newsletter. The venerated broadcaster told him that at this point of his life, “I can honestly say that even though there are some losses, the gains always slightly outweigh them. And it is true for me that every decade I have lived, is better than the one before. Admittedly this is unusually lucky circumstances and I am filled with a gratitude I can’t describe.”
Moody e-mailed GBONews that Downs, who resides in Phoenix, is “a truly remarkable person. We used to meet privately for lunch every week in New York City because he wanted private tutoring in gerontology (part of our certificate program in aging at Hunter, but his schedule on “20/20” didn’t permit him to come to regular classes). He paid for the lunches (at a top NY City restaurant!).’”
Moody continued, “What I learned is that he is one of the most truly humble people I’ve ever met: exactly the same off-camera as he was on camera. His rather rigorous ‘disengagement’ from media life hasn’t at all meant disengagement from the world. But he has grown in wisdom (from my standpoint, anyway). I consider my relationship with him one of the genuine gifts I’ve received in my life.”
Also, Generations-beat writers interested in receiving Moody’s excellent Human Values in Aging Newsletter by e-mail each month, can ask to subscribe with a note to him at hrmoody@yahoo.com. Moody, former director of AARP’s academic affairs program, includes brief items relating to the philosophy and spirituality of aging, along with listings of upcoming conferences and programs.
***Hearty Congratulations on the New Yorker’s recognition of Jim Ridgeway with it’s posting of “James Ridgeway’s Solitary Reporting,” by Jennifer Gonnerman, (Jan. 27). She wrote, “There may be no reporter in the United States who has collected more stories of solitary-confinement prisoners than the veteran investigative reporter James Ridgeway. Since it is virtually impossible for a reporter to gain access to a solitary-confinement unit, Ridgeway came up with another strategy. ‘I wanted to use the prisoners themselves as reporters,” he told me. ‘Of course, that’s taboo in the mainstream press, since we all know they’re liars and double dealers and escape artists.’ He chuckled. But breaking that taboo ‘didn’t bother me at all,’ he said. ‘My position was: all we want to do here is, we want to know what is going on inside.’”
Gonnerman sketches his half-century career, including Ridgeway’s 30-plus years as the Washington correspondent for the Village Voice.” She notes that Mother Jones, for which he has contributed articles for some years, has called him “one of the legends of modern muckraking.” Ridgeway, who turns 80 on April 13, just published his 19th book week, Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement, (New Press). It is a book of prisoners’ writing, which he co-edited with Solitary Watch co-founder Jean Casella and Sarah Shourd (who was held in solitary confinement in Iran for over 400 days).
Some of those featured in the book were held in mind-numbing isolation for years, such as William Blake, penned up for 26 years and counting. The aging of prisoners is a subject Ridgeway has pursued in recent years. With support from the 2012 Journalists in Aging Fellows program, sponsored by New America Media (NAM) and the Gerontological Society of America, he published “The Other Death Sentence: Aging and Dying in America’s Prisons” in Mother Jones, with a shorter version posted at NAM (Sept. 26, 2012). That article noted. ”More than 100,000 Americans are destined to spend their final years in prison—the prison of old age behind bars.”
The New Yorker’s Gonnerman observed of Ridgeway, “Lately, his eyesight has been weakening, making it much harder for him to read and file all the letters that sit in piles atop his desk. ‘I have so many right now I can’t face them,’ he said. But he has no plans to stop. ‘Most of these guys I write to, all they want is to reach out and have a human hand,’ he said. ‘I used to think they wanted their cases dealt with, but all they really want is just to have some sort of correspondence, some kind of contact with the outside world.’”
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