Brent Green

Popular culture favors youth. Celebrity favors youth. Many of today's icons of the Boomer generation achieved fame before turning 25, certainly by 35.

But unlike older generations, where many youth icons faded from superstardom after age 45, Boomer icons persist today, filling stadiums (Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen,...

Intergenerational equity is a provocative catch-phrase bracketing some of the most important fiscal debates of our time, from today through mid-century. The crucial question posed by intergenerational equity is this: To what extent are post-50 adults financially obligated to future generations? More pointedly: Are those over 50 about to bankrupt...

Two years ago I spoke at the Florida Boomer Lifestyle Conference in Clearwater, Florida. I entitled my presentation "The Mission, The Man, The Money: Marketing to Baby Boomer Men." My goal was to inspire this audience about business possibilities revolving around Boomer male aging in a society that has often...

The aged man struggled to get out of his recliner. His leg muscles could not lift his weight into a vertical position, so he fell back into the chair, exhausted. He sat there for a few minutes, trying to command his weak muscles to help him stand. He barely had...

"Indeed, if there is one sentiment that unites the crises in Europe and America it is a powerful sense of 'baby boomers behaving badly' -- a powerful sense that the generation that came of age in the last 50 years, my generation, will be remembered most for the incredible bounty...

In the realm of marketing to adults older than 45, vigorous debates arise about how best to construct advertising messages and frame offers in memorable and compelling ways. Pundit opinions fall into three overlapping theoretical camps.

Some are proponents of "Ageless Marketing" as conceived and articulated by my colleague David...

News media have been contemplating implications of the oldest Baby Boomers turning 65 this year. This is a symbolic passage but nevertheless thought worthy. Around 10,000 will reach the milestone daily for the next nineteen years. Never has the nation dealt with population aging of this magnitude.

As critics...

The Internet provides Baby Boomers with the most potent medium in history to effect change, nearby and far away. Social networks are no longer merely local and temporal but rather global and eternal. We have daily opportunities to influence hundreds, thousands or even millions with a single Tweet, Facebook post...

In a one-sided editorial argument lambasting "old-age benefits," Denver Post editorial writer Chuck Plunkett employs a metaphor of the sinking Titanic. The ship's designer recognized that too many watertight chambers had been breached by the iceberg and the ship would sink: "a mathematical certainty." This vivid analogy buttresses...

Let's pretend you're 55 with a pedigree resume -- in financial services, marketing, management, information technology -- whatever. You're laid off from a good job where you've been a model employee for 27 years, climbing the ladder to division vice president. A tough economy might make excuses for your misfortune.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation (PGPF) is sponsoring a "fiscal summit" on April 28 to elucidate perils besetting the nation, particularly anticipated retirement of the Baby Boomer Generation (b. 1946 - 1964) and rising demand for "social insurance." The foundation's focus is on curtailing entitlement spending, including an alleged backstage...

On November 19th, USA Today published a 64-page special tribute edition in homage to Muhammad Ali, honoring the 50th anniversary of his 1960 Olympic gold medal. Barack Obama wrote a lead essay, in which the President ignored the champ's divisive resistance to military conscription and incendiary unpopularity during the Vietnam War era.

Mr. Obama clearly faced a...

On December 1, 1969, a single number hung over my head like the Sword of Damocles. That innocuous written number had been tucked inside a blue plastic capsule, mixed with 365 other identical capsules, and then pulled randomly from a large glass jar. The number represented my birthday; it was...

Millions of Baby Boomers and older workers anticipate pursuing work beyond their mid-60's, the traditional time for retirement. For some, deficient retirement assets point to a history of hard luck and inadequate saving. For others more fortunate to have saved, the Great Recession has decimated retirement accounts, forcing delayed retirement....

Hewn by steady hands of Michelangelo, the seventeen-foot statue of David is luminescent: one of the world's most important masterpieces. I encircled the statue in awe that anything this exquisite could have been carved by a mere human being from a weathered slab of Carrara marble. I stood before the...

Woodstock has been described as a watershed, seminal, formative, game-changing, and with dozens of superlatives. Those who've attempted to contain the baby boomer generation in a tidy sociological package have pointed at Woodstock in summary, sometimes with derision for the Bacchanalian overtones this word can represent.

Woodstock means little until...