ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the future of the age-structured life course in the United States and worldwide. It addresses the role of changing workplace institutions in reconstructing or perhaps deconstructing the tripartite life course. These changes emanate from the globalization of markets that has reorganized labor and redistributed market power from workers to shareholders and financial managers. The chapter examines the countervailing pressures of population aging that promote the growing individualization of the life course. These pressures bring new opportunities and new risks to aging cohorts. The chapter explains the future of the US baby boom cohorts. The aging baby boom is a study in variability and inequality and a harbinger of the future of the age-structured life course. Future changes in the labor market and in the Social Security system could introduce the variability to the timing of retirement among baby boom cohorts.
