Who knew getting old would be this painful?
The median age of the American worker is 42, four years more than the median 20 years ago.
Americans are used to hearing dire warnings about aging. We are told it could bankrupt the social safety net as Medicare and Social Security run out of money. We are regularly admonished about the inadequacy of our nest eggs.
These are the least of our worries. Reshaping the work force, and distorting patterns of saving and investment, the aging of the American population is carving an unexpectedly broad path of destruction across the economy.
It explains a lot about what’s wrong. Aging, according to recent economic research, is stunting the emergence of new businesses and sapping productivity. It is contributing to the rise in monopoly power and eating into workers’ share of national income. Many of our most intractable economic ills can be traced to some degree to this ineluctable fact: America is getting old.
