What’s the Big Idea: Bracing for the Silver Tsunami

Bracing for the Silver Tsunami

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 7-8:30 PM.

Maturing baby boomers, the 81 million people born between 1946 and 1964, will turn 65 at a rate of more than 8,000 per day over the next twenty years. Thanks to major medical advances and increases in active living and healthy eating, a person turning 65 today is expected to live on average another 18.7 years, six years longer than a person turning 65 in 1940. The aging of the boomer generation combined with increased longevity is ushering in a huge wave of older adults, a silver tsunami which will dramatically transform all of our nation’s social, economic, and political institutions. Both the challenges and opportunities undergirding our nation’s impending silver tsunami will be discussed.

James H. Johnson, Jr., is the William R. Kenan Jr., Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and Director of the Urban Investment Strategies Center at the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his PhD from Michigan State University, his MS from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and his BS from North Carolina Central University. His research interests include community and economic development, the effects of demographic changes on the US workplace, inter-ethnic minority conflict in advanced industrial societies, urban poverty and public policy in urban America, and workforce diversity issues. He has published more than 100 scholarly research articles and three research monographs and has co-edited four theme issues of scholarly journals on these and related topics. His latest book is Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in Los Angles. 

This event is the first in a three-part series of hosted by the UNC Friday Center titled What’s the Big Idea. This year’s theme is “Our Maturing Society.”

Click here to learn more about the “Our Maturing Society” series, and register to attend.