‘The real generation gap is about expectations’: What happens to retirement if we live to 130?
Source: Fortune ·
The MIT AgeLab's Joe Coughlin isn't sold on the Great Wealth Transfer. "For all the kids waiting for that great check in the sky, don’t hold your breath.”
From the source
The “Great Wealth Transfer” from Baby Boomers to subsequent generations has been sold as the easy part of retirement. Boomers hold the money, and the money will move down to their children someday increasingly soon—or at least that’s the idea. Joe Coughlin, who founded MIT’s AgeLab in 1999, thinks even the size of the handoff will prove slippery. Estimates range from $36 trillion to $124 trillion, and he chuckled at the spread in a recent interview with Fortune. The bigger problem, explained one of the world’s foremost experts on longevity, is timing. The narrative of that transfer generally assumes retirement at 65 and a relatively short stretch of life after that, but the 21st century seems to have other plans. The Longevity Preparedness Index (LPI), which life insurance company John Hancock Financial and MIT AgeLab exclusively shared with Fortune ahead of its release, is a national benchmark to measure how ready U.S. adults are to live once they get older. This year, Americans…