Globe turning gray

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has called it a potential time bomb, a period of global economic stagnation triggered by falling fertility rates and increasing life expectancies.

As the populations of the world's industrial nations grow older, the fallout could be devastating, leading to chronic labor shortages, higher taxes, shrinking numbers of consumers and governments in default.

Utah, with the youngest population in the nation, is not immune from the graying onslaught. At present, Utah's population aged 65 years old and older represents one of the lowest elder populations in the country.

"But Utah has experienced dramatic growth in the percent increase of 65 and older in the past decade," said Scott Wright, a professor in gerontology at the University of Utah. "We've had a 27 percent increase in the 65 population since 1990. This makes Utah the sixth-fastest-growing state for 65 plus in the United States during the past decade."

The approaching "geezer glut," as one national magazine coined it, will impact everything from personal pension plans and retail trends to hiring practices and immigration.

According to business futurist Roger Herman, the United States alone will face a labor shortage of more than 10 million people by 2010, a result, in part, of 77 million baby boomers racing toward retirement.

"Many corporate leaders are not even aware that a potential catastrophe looms just around the corner," Herman said from his Greensboro, N.C., office. "Most of them unfortunately have their heads in the sand. They just are complacent and to a significant extent ignorant of what's happening in their operating environment. In a relatively short period of time, things are going to be dramatically different."

Impending crisis

Herman writes in his new book, "Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People," that the late 1990s gave corporate leaders a taste of what is coming in this decade. "What we will experience in 2003-2010 will make the work force crisis of the late 1990s seem like a practice session."

In the United States today, one retired person is supported by roughly four workers. However, the baby boom exodus will double the dependent elder population, leaving each retiree supported by just two workers.

"It does mean that taxes could double, too," said Paul Hewitt, director of the global aging initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. "A lot will depend on what we do to reform Medicare."