Financial gerontology is a multidisciplinary field of study encompassing both academic and professional education, that integrates research on aging and human development with the concerns of finance and business. Following from its roots in social gerontology, Financial gerontology is not simply the study of old people but emphasizes the multiple processes of aging. In particular, research and teaching in financial gerontology draws upon four kinds of aging or "'four lenses" through which aging and finance can be viewed: population aging, individual aging, family aging, and generational aging. While it is problematic that "demography is destiny," demographic concepts, issues, and data play a substantial role in understanding the dynamics of financial gerontology. For example, through the lens of population aging, demography identifies the number of persons of different ages in cities and countries—and at multiple points in time. Through the lens of individual aging, demography also notes changes in the length of time—number of years lived in older age, typically measured by increases in life expectancy. From in its founding years in the beginning of the 21st century, one primary interest of Financial Gerontology has been on baby boomers and their relationships with their parents. The impact of these two kinds of aging on finance are reasonably apparent. The large and increasing number of older persons [population aging] in a society, no matter how "old age" is defined, and the longer each of these persons lives [individual aging], the greater the impact on a society's pattern of retirement, public and private pension systems, health, health care, and the personal and societal financing of health care. The focus on boomers illustrates also the other two lenses or "kinds" of aging. How boomers deal with the social, emotional, and financial aspects of their parents' aging is a central aspect of family aging. And how boomers may differ from their parents born and raised twenty to forty years earlier, and differ from their Generation X and Millennial children and grandchildren, are substantial aspects of generational aging.
Origins of financial gerontology
Establishment of the field of study The origins of financial gerontology reflect the vision of two business professionals, Joseph Boettner, a successful insurance salesman and entrepreneur, and Davis Gregg, a successful business educator and administrator. Boettner was born in 1903 and left West Philadelphia High School to work in the city's booming insurance industry. Building from a successful career in sales he purchased the failing Philadelphia Life Insurance Company (for $1 per share), and established it as a successful company. Boettner's post-high school education was with the American College of Life Underwriters, then an insurance education program within the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business & Finance; he earned his Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU) designation in 1934. Born in 1918, Gregg graduated from the University of Texas and earned his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1947, where he studied under the legendary professor of insurance Solomon Huebner, the founder of the American College of Life Underwriters and considered by many to be the "father of insurance education" Gregg was on the faculty of Stanford University when Huebner asked him to come to the insurance college in Philadelphia for a short time. The "short time" became four decades including thirty years (1954 to 1983) as the college's president. Combining his wealth and continuing interest in financial education, Boettner made several investments in higher education, including endowing academic chairs primarily in the realm of life insurance programs. As both his business perspectives and his experience with personal aging evolved, however, his views about the educational needs of the insurance industry also changed. Although his own resources allowed him to respond successfully to the financial challenges of aging, he became increasingly concerned about how the average person can deal with aging and, of equal significance, how educational programs could be created to respond to the needs and concerns of aging persons. Over the years Gregg's intellectual experience as dean and president encouraged him to expand the college's distance education curriculum beyond the CLU designation which focused substantially on life insurance. Under his leadership the college developed a second professional designation, the Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC) whose approach included financial planning courses beyond life insurance. By the 1980s Boettner's concerns about personal aging and financial education began to merge with Gregg's views on the need for more comprehensive professional education in the expanding field of financial services. A result of these joint concerns was the concept and a plan for a new research institute that would focus on the interconnections among social gerontology and personal finance. With a small gift from Boettner, Gregg convened a study committee of nationally known gerontologists which, after two years of assessment, agreed on four organizing principles: (1) that there was in fact a need for specialized research that integrates gerontology and financial planning; (2) that a social gerontology research center could succeed at a small specialized business school; (3) that the permanent director of the institute should be an experienced gerontologist because the financial side of the relationship would be provided by the business school's faculty; and (4) that the new institute would be communicating gerontological concerns to financial professionals and financial concerns to gerontologists.
The Boettner Institute of Financial Gerontology On July 4, 1986 American College established the Boettner Research Institute under Gregg's supervision. Its first permanent director was Neal E. Cutler, a professor of political science and gerontology, recruited in 1989 from the University of Southern California's Andrus Gerontology Center. A challenge of the new leadership team was to create a more content-descriptive name for the institute. A pensions or retirement institute was considered, but this was somewhat narrower than the mandate of the new institute; further, the Wharton School at the nearby University of Pennsylvania already had a well-established Pensions Research Council. More critically, the new institute was to be unique in emphasizing the contributions of gerontology to a broad range of academic fields and financial professionals. Fortunately, as models there are several well-recognized gerontological interdisciplinary sub-fields, including biological gerontology, social gerontology, occupational gerontology, and recreational gerontology; and the phrase "financial gerontology" was starting to be seen in professional publications. Consequently, in 1990 "Boettner Institute of Financial Gerontology" was chosen as the official name in order both to create new sub-fields in both gerontology and in finance, and to describe and communicate the institute's scope of academic and professional education and research. The initial professional and public recognition of the significance of Financial Gerontology was substantial, and to some extent exceeded the expectations of its organizers and advisers. In response, the desirability of a broader set of academic supports than originally planned was identified. In 1992 the Boettner Institute of Financial Gerontology became chartered as a nonprofit charitable educational corporation with an independently appointed board of trustees of prominent business and gerontology academics and practitioners. The same year, the trustees voted to move the institute from The American College and accept an invitation to become affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts & Sciences. In order to establish that the foundations of Financial Gerontology were both to learn from and speak to the disciplines of gerontology and financial services, the Boettner Institute organized a series of published lectures given by renown experts in the "two sides" of Financial Gerontology. The inaugural lecture was given in 1997 by George L. Maddox, Director of the Duke University Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development: "Age and Well-Being." Other lectures included: William C. Greenough, CEO of TIAA-CREF and developer of the variable-annuity stock fund: "Critical Policy Issues for Pensions" (1989). Matilda White Riley, Director of the Office of Social and Behavioral Science, National Institute of Aging: "Aging in the Twenty-first Century" (1990). Davis W. Gregg, Founding Director of the Boettner Institute: "The Human Wealth Span: A Life Span View of Financial Well-Being" (1992). James E. Birren, psychologist and founding director of the USC Andrus Gerontology Center: "Information and Consumer Decisions-Making: Maintaining Resources and Independence"(1994). Dallas L. Salisbury, CEO of the Employee Benefit Research Institute: "Recent Trends in Pensions, Benefits, and Retirement: In-House Research" (1995). In keeping with its established academic naming practices, the University of Pennsylvania renamed the Institute as the Boettner Center of Financial Gerontology. In 2003 the Center was moved into the university's Wharton School as the Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Research affiliated with the business school's Pension Research Council, under the direction of Olivia S. Mitchell. The Wharton School is also home to one of the two (see below) Boettner-funded endowed chairs in Financial Gerontology.
Financial gerontology as academic teaching and research
The human wealth span Early Financial Gerontology research focused on the interaction of (and longitudinal trends in) middle-aging and older-aging, and their combined impact on savings, retirement, health care, and long-term care. Research on aging and money often juxtaposes old age with the adequacy of financial resources (pensions, Social Security, and a variety of savings and investment approaches, often referred to as the "three legged stool", to support the quality of personal and family later life. The integration of middle age as an essential dimension of Financial Gerontology reflected Gregg's and Cutler's conceptualization of the "Human Wealth Span" introduced in 1991-1992 As Gregg noted in his 1992 Boettner Lecture, the Human Wealth Span "mirrors" the better known Human Life Span concept which speaks not only to patterns of maturation and aging, but also to identifiable stages in human development. An especially important additional link in the etiology of the Wealth Span is the emphasis on the Health Span in Rowe and Kahn's conceptualization of successful aging, especially the connection between health span stages, health behavior and, thereby, "successful aging." In terms of stages, it is apparent that health behavior choices made earlier affect health status and outcomes later in life. Rowe and Kahn emphasize in this regard, however, that while it is better to start early and always have good health behaviors, even starting such behaviors later life can affect and improve health. For example, both cessation of smoking or "pumping iron" in one's 60s or 70s can have beneficial effects. Drawing on these insights, the wealth span representation of the life span in financial terms emphasizes two stages: the accumulation stage and the expenditure stage, which are somewhat correlated with developmental-maturational stages. Traditionally, people accumulate wealth in their younger and middle-aged, years, and spend that wealth in their later retirement years. Clearly, as Modigliani's life-cycle saving-spending hypothesis illustrates, this is a purposeful simplification of a complex life span dynamic; many people continue to (work and) accumulate in their older years just as, of course, younger and middle-aged persons spend during the accumulation years of their wealth span.
Changes in balance Beyond a concern with the stages of accumulation and expenditure, the wealth span model offers two valuable tools of analysis useful for both academic research and financial practice: (1) changes in the balance between the accumulation stage and the expenditure stage, and (2) increases in the complexity of each of the two stages. Balance here refers to the number of years in each of the two stages. The usual assumption for financial planning and financial well-being in later life is that the accumulation years provide the wealth for the expenditure years. Basically (but more complex in real life) the event or act of retirement is the behavioral fulcrum that conceptually divides an individual's wealth span into the accumulation years vs. the expenditure years. Compared to the first decades of the twentieth century when many men and women dropped out of high school or earlier to work, since the 1950s most Americans stay in school (high school, college, graduate school) longer than before, thereby reducing the number of years in accumulation stage. Similarly, the number of accumulation years is reduced due to early retirement. As the history of work and retirement during the past seventy years demonstrates, patterns of retirement in the U.S. have shifted, with the strong preferences for early retirement seen during the second half of the 20th century now easing as increasing numbers of older workers (older boomers) remain in or return to the labor force. By itself a shorter accumulation stage tells only part of the story. At the same time, across the twentieth century life expectancy has increased substantially resulting in a longer expenditure stage. From the perspective of Financial Gerontology such a shift means that people have fewer years to accumulate and what has been accumulated must last for a longer number of expenditure years. Of course, the fulcrum between the two stages (i.e., the act of retirement) can and has been changing as, in recent years, fewer middle-age and older workers are opting for early retirement. Thus, while it is unlikely that older-age life expectancy will dramatically decline to shorten the expenditure stage, social policy and individual choice do influence the number of years in both the accumulation and expenditure stages. The wealth span model simply provides context, identifies the components, and directs attention to the dynamic interaction between and among them.
Changes in complexity During the same decades in which the balance between the number of years in the two stages has been changing, the complexity within both the accumulation stage and the expenditure stage also has been increasing. In particular, the well-documented improvements in life expectancy in the United States—including older-age life expectancy as well as life expectancy at birth—has increased the complexity of the wealth span, both accumulation opportunities and expenditure responsibilities, in at least three substantial ways: health care and health care finance, pensions and retirement finance, and family-financial behaviors. First, the more direct impact of greater longevity on finance focuses on health—including both investing in personal health behaviors that anticipate old-age health issues, and the financing of health care in later life. In the U.S. this includes an accumulation stage planning focus on insurance, involving private health care insurance, Medicare, and the emergence of long-term care and long-term care insurance. With rising societal and individual health care costs, both the accumulation stage and expenditure stage of the wealth span have become more complex. A second cluster of expanded wealth span complexities centers on the substantial changes in the U.S. pension or "retirement income" system. In addition to the national Social Security system which provides some basic retirement income for almost all workers, almost half (46%) of all private sector workers also have an employer-sponsored pension. The increasing wealth span complexity, however, is found in the dramatic change in the kind of pensions held by American workers: Defined Benefit (DB plans) vs. Defined Contribution (DC plans) pension plans. While the discussion of these types of pensions is discussed in detail elsewhere, it is the fundamental difference in what is "defined"—that is, what is "guaranteed" to the worker in the expenditure stage—that produces the substantial increases in complexity. Conceptually, DB plans define, or largely guarantee, the number of dollars the worker will receive after retirement. It is the employer, primarily, who is responsible for contributing the necessary funds into the plan (sometimes but not always with contributions from the employee). In other words, it is the "output" of pension money that is defined or guaranteed. By contrast, in DC plans, it is only the "input" of contributions into the pension plan that is defined or guaranteed in advance. In many DC plans the employee contributes a specified amount (or percentage) to his/her pension account and the employer matches the amount (in some cases only the employee or only the employer make the contributions). In all these cases, however, the later-life "output" of money to the retiree is based on how well, how successful, the contributed funds have been invested. The magnitude of changes in wealth span complexity precipitated by the shift from Defined Benefit to Defined Contribution plans is illustrated by the clarity of the shift from 1979 to 2013, documented by the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and reported by the Employee Benefit Research Institute: in 1979 28% of private sector workers had a DB pension and only 7% had a DC pension (and 10% had both); by 2013, only 2% had a DB pension and 33% had a DC pension (and 11% had both). Third, a separate but intertwined expenditure issue focuses on family aging—the degree to which longevity has changed the age structure of the family with substantial implications for the financial relationships between and among family members. When we say that "people are living longer" we are also saying that parents are living longer. The 1980s concept of the sandwich generation focused on forty-year-olds (usually women) simultaneously taking care of their 65-year-old parents and their babies and toddlers. Greater longevity is accompanied by the emergence, however, of the senior sandwich generation in which 60-year-olds are now the family generation in the middle taking care of (socially and financially) their 90-year-old parents alongside caring for their teenage and young-adult children. These demographically and financiallynew "senior sandwich" responsibilities of middle-agers can have substantial impact on their expenditure stage years, as they are now caring for elderly parents just as they are planning for and entering their own later life. Simultaneously, anticipation of these responsibilities can also add complexity to their accumulation stage planning. While the wealth span model is primarily an individual-level construct, financing health care and middle-age care for elderly parents are substantial issues of macro financial-social policy as well as of individual behavior. Over the past century substantial changes in complexity have affected both the accumulation and expenditure stages of the wealth span. The increased complexity of the expenditure stage is dramatically evidenced by the fundamental demographic facts of increasing life expectancy which, at base, means spending over a longer number of years. Clearly the largest set of complexities precipitated by greater longevity are seen in older age health, cultural and scientific responses to health and aging, and of course the personal and societal financing of health care—including health care insurance. Medicare in particular, and the emergence of long-term care, illustrate the macro financial and political dimensions of the individual consequences of an evolving wealth span. Further exacerbating this complexity, senior sandwich generation responsibilities extend the personal financial impact of older-age longevity to the middle-age children of elderly parents. For example, In 1900 only 39 percent of persons age 50 had one surviving parent, rising to 80 percent by 2000. Further, in 1900 only 7 percent of 60-year-olds had even one parent alive, rising to 49 percent by 2000.
Endowed chairs in financial gerontology Joseph E. Boettner, the successful high school educated insurance executive, directed a substantial portion of his wealth to higher education. His earlier gifts reflected his close involvement with the administration and finance of life insurance, especially as a central element in estate planning. With his support, in 1966 Temple University established The Joseph E. Boettner Chair of Risk Management and Insurance. The endowment currently supports not only a distinguished professorship but also scholarships for students seeking the MBA degree. Over the decades during which he worked with his colleague and great friend Davis Gregg (he called Gregg his "little brother") Boettner came to publicly recognize the importance of creating stronger linkages among life insurance, financial planning, and the science of gerontology. Together Boettner and Gregg also acknowledged that the emerging field of Financial Gerontology would develop best through both a research agenda (i.e., the Boettner Institute) and university programs that support both academic and professional education. Since 1975 Boettner had been a Trustee of Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia. In addition to academic programs he supported development of the campus including a gift that produced Boettner Hall, an undergraduate apartment residence. It was agreed that the new Boettner Chair would be located at Widener. On October 29, 1993, Boettner's "little brother" (fifteen years his junior) died. Respecting Boettner's wishes the new Widener Chair was named the Boettner-Gregg Chair in Financial Gerontology. Also with Widener's support, in 1994 Neal Cutler, who had been Director of the Boettner Center at Penn, was named as the first holder of the Boettner-Gregg Chair. Joseph Boettner died on October 27, 1994. The Chair at Widener continues as part of the School of Business Administration, currently known as the Boettner Endowed Professor in Financial Planning, held by Kenn B. Tacchino, a professor of taxation and financial planning. Since 1992 the Boettner Center of Financial Gerontology has been part of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to the Center the Boettner resources now support a Wharton professorship, first known as the Joseph E. and Ruth E. Boettner Professor of Financial Gerontology, and held by Beth Soldo, a demographer and sociologist who was also Director of the Boettner Center. It is currently known as the Boettner Professorship, held by Kent Smetters, a professor of business economics in the Wharton School Department of Business Economics and Public Policy.
Emerging literature of financial gerontology One hallmark of the institutionalization of a new academic field or subfield is the development of "its own" literature. To be sure, there are countless publications in the academic disciplines of finance and gerontology that refer to money and aging. The four kinds of aging noted earlier—population aging, individual aging, family aging, and generational aging—each identify multiple linkages among aging processes, older men and women, money, and finance that are the focus of academic publications in their respective disciplines. The new field of Financial Gerontology emphasizes closer connections among the scholars, professionals, and writings of the separate fields. The intent, as well as the integration, travels in both directions: to expand the understanding of gerontology among financial professionals and to further illustrate the complexities of finance to gerontologists. This integration is well illustrated by an emerging literature of Financial Gerontology that has been developing over the last twenty-five years, including articles, books, and special issues of academic journals. The 1992 volume, Aging, Money, and Life Satisfaction: Aspects of Financial Gerontology, a first publication of the Boettner Institute, includes an overview of new field plus the first series of annual Boettner Lectures (detailed above in the "Boettner Institute of Financial Gerontology" section). Of special note is the wealth span model discussed in Davis Gregg's demonstration of how the concepts of life span and health span lead directly to an understanding of financial well-being in later life. The wealth span concept is drawn from Nobel prize-winning economist Franco Modigliani's life cycle saving-spending hypothesis and became a continuing aspect of the Boettner Institute's research and teaching, as noted earlier. A major contribution to the development of the literature of Financial Gerontology was the publication in 1996 of the Encyclopedia of Financial Gerontology edited by Lois Vitt and Jurg Siegenthaler. The one-volume publication includes over 150 authors each providing a two- to five-page article on a subject relevant to one of eight core topics: Economic and Income Security; Employment, Work, and Retirement; Family and Intergenerational Issues; Financial Advice, Investments, and Consumer Services; Health Care and Health Insurance; Housing and Housing Finance; Legal Issues and Services; Quality of Life and Well-Being. As an encyclopedia, the organization is of course alphabetical, ranging literally from Accelerated Death Benefits to Zoning. To enhance pedagogical value to educators, however, each of the 150+ articles is listed under one of the eight core topics at the front of the volume. To enhance value to researchers, each article includes a short bibliography plus a number of "see also" references to other articles in the collection. Finally, given the broad multidisciplinary nature of the developing field of Financial Gerontology, including the non-standardization of several disciplinary vocabularies, the encyclopedia includes a massively detailed 40-page index in which such subjects as "assets," "consumer protection," or "employment" are included in multiple articles. In 2003, an expanded edition of the encyclopedia was published under the title Encyclopedia of Retirement and Finance edited by Lois Vitt. The number of authors, articles, and core topics were all increased, resulting in a substantial two-volume encyclopedia. While a core purpose continued to be as a resource for researchers and teachers, the new edition signals the growth of Financial Gerontology as a component of professional education. [See "Financial Gerontology as Professional Education" below.] As Vitt writes in the Preface: "My experience in consumer financial education during the past several years led to this revised edition, which has been expanded to include many additional topics about preretirement and retirement issues. Included in the new edition are entries that span the array of employer sponsored health and retirement benefits, which are increasingly central to working Americans and to their partners and family members. There is a great need for this financial knowledge to reach the many professionals who advise, support, sell products to, serve, assist, and teach mid-life and later-life clients." In 2002 the J.K. LasserPro division of Wiley published the first textbook in Financial Gerontology, under the title Advising Mature Clients: The New Science of Wealth Span Planning. The book builds on two of the key Financial Gerontology concepts mentioned earlier: (1) the wealth span, including its accumulation stage and expenditure stage, and (2) the four "lenses" or kinds of aging: individual aging, population aging, family aging, and generational aging. The wealth span concept builds on Rowe and Kahn's ideas of "health span" and successful aging. As Cutler notes, just as good health habits can start at any time but should start early in life, so too can good financial habits start any time but better begun early. Following a detailed review of the different "kinds" of aging the book focuses directly on the how changes in the stages of the wealth span affect individual financial attitudes and behavior. Chapter 5 focuses on the changing "balance" in years between the accumulation stage (fewer years due to personal preferences and public policies) favoring early retirement, and the expenditure stage (more years due to increasing longevity). Of perhaps greater significance (Chapter 6) are three interrelated dimensions of increasing complexity of the accumulation stage: (1) the trend toward multiple sources of later-life income which an individual or family is likely to have (e.g., an individual retirement account, an employer-based pension, Social Security, personal investments and savings, home equity); (2) the dramatic move from Defined Benefit pensions ("they are responsible for my future retirement income") to Defined Contribution pensions ("I am responsible for my future retirement income"); (3) increasing family-connected financial complexities (nowadays a 62-year-old is more likely than in prior decades to have one or more surviving 87-year-old parents). The textbook also includes chapters on the multiple meanings of "middle" when talking about the financial psychology of middle age, as well as chapters on health insurance, long-term care, and reverse mortgages. Not surprisingly, much of the data and some of the issues surrounding, for example, Medicare (e.g., there was no Medicare Part D in 2002), Medicaid, long-term care insurance, and nursing home cost data, are out of date. Conversely, the key concepts surrounding the wealth span model (such as changes in the accumulation stage and the expenditure stage) remain relevant as the demographic, personal, and policy context of finance and aging becomes more complex. In this regard, speaking as much to undergraduates as to financial professionals, Chapter 1 identifies four Principles of Financial Gerontology that are relatively independent of the "current" state of aging and finance: (1) Gerontology is not the study of old people. (2) Financial decisions are family decisions. (3) Wealth Span interventions are better when made earlier but can work at any age. (4) The Wealth Span adviser, as a trusted family adviser, will be called upon to—and should be educationally equipped to—provide non-financial guidance. (p. 6). In addition to the development of text and handbooks, the broader academic and interdisciplinary recognition of a new field or subfield is evidenced also by the publication of special topical issues of major disciplinary journals. The American Society on Aging [ASA] is one of the two major multidisciplinary membership organizations in the United States focusing on issues of aging. [The older, slightly larger organization is the Gerontological Society of America, founded in 1945, which has separate divisions for biological-medical science, behavioral sciences, and social practice.] Founded in 1954, the ASA's membership of 5,000 professionals includes educators and researchers alongside service providers, program administrators, business executives, policy makers, and students. Each issue of the ASA's widely-read journal, Generations, typically focuses on a single research or policy issue, offering a dozen or more articles plus bibliographical resources. The Summer 1997 issue of Generations (volume XXI, no. 2) was titled "Financial Dimensions of Aging." The twelve articles introduced the relatively new field of Financial Gerontology to a new audience of professionals. Subjects included the history of retirement security, economic diversity, boomers as young middle-agers compared to their parents at the same age (in 1997 boomers were only 33 to 51 years old), financial literacy, and an assessment of the Social Security crisis of the day. The Winter 2004-05 issue of Generations (volume XXVII, no. 4), titled "Silver Industries," provided a more focused business and aging view of Financial Gerontology. Here the emphasis was on how specific industries and products are being developed in response to aging individuals and aging society. Introductory articles included a brief history of the evolving link between business and aging, generational differences in the psychology of the older consumer, and the marketing challenges in reaching older consumers. Most of the seventeen articles, however, focused on the relationship of aging to specific industries, including: the pharmaceutical industry, financial services, automobiles, moving services, venture capital, and the personal digital assistant (forerunner of today's smartphones). The Silver Industries construct continues to be an important dimension of Financial Gerontology, including for example,The Silver Market Phenomenon: Marketing and Innovation in the Aging Society
Financial gerontology as professional education
Bimonthly financial gerontology column The Journal of Financial Service Professionals, established in 1946, published bimonthly, is the official journal of the Society of Financial Service Professionals. The Society, established in 1927, was the de facto alumni association of the American College of Life Underwriters (known currently as The American College of Financial Services) whose primary insurance education designations are the Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU) and more recently the Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC). Hence, the original name of the journal was the Journal of the American Society of CLU and ChFC. In addition to longer articles submitted on a range of financial, legal, and administrative topics, each issue of the journal includes several continuing "Departments." These bimonthly research and professional practice reviews and tutorials include such continuing topics as Accounting & Taxation, Social Security Planning, Ethics, Practice Management, Estate Planning, Technology, Health Insurance, Risk Management, and Advice for the New Planner. In the November 1990 issue of the Journal of the American Society of CLU and ChFC, President-Emeritus of the American College of Life Underwriters, Davis W. Gregg, introduced a new continuing column ("Department") titled "Financial Gerontology" with his essay on the Human Wealth Span. The first "permanent" author of the column was Neal E. Cutler, the recently installed Director of the Boettner Institute of Financial Gerontology (described earlier). His first column was also published in the November 1990 issue of the journal, alongside Gregg's introduction. Cutler authored the column for a quarter-century (bimonthly through 1997 and every other bimonthly column through March 2016). During these years, guest authors and co-authors included Harry R. ("Rick") Moody, Director of Academic Affairs at the AARP; Janice I. Wassel, Director of The Gerontology Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; Robert C. Atchley, Director of the Scripps Gerontology Center at the Miami University of Ohio; and Steven J. Devlin, a former vice-provost at Lehigh University. The second permanent author of the Financial Gerontology column, sharing the bimonthly writing with Cutler beginning in 1997, was and is Sandra Timmermann. Timmermann is a gerontologist who focuses on educational outreach especially in the areas of business, care-giving, long-term care, and adult housing. A recipient of the American Society on Aging's Cavanagh Award for Excellence in Education and Training, Timmermann was Executive Director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute from 1997 to 2013. She is currently Adjunct Professor of Gerontology at the American College of Financial Services. Following Cutler's "retirement" from the column, John N. Migliaccio was selected by the Journal as the third permanent author of "Financial Gerontology" sharing the bimonthly schedule with Timmermann. Migliaccio is President of Maturing Mark Services company, a planning and research consultancy working with financial and social services companies and agencies. He is adjunct faculty in the DePaul University Asset-Based Community Development Institute, was one of the founders of the American Institute of Financial Gerontology, and previously was Director of Research at the MetLife Mature Market Institute.
Multiple columns, multiple topics The orientation of the "gerontology column" in the Journal of Financial Service Professionals mirrors the basic mission of Financial Gerontology itself: to introduce, teach, illustrate, document, and explain the concepts, issues, data, and experiences of gerontology to professionals in the fields of finance and business. Since 1990, the range of topics and titles collectively reflects what could be seen as a full introductory university course in gerontology offered to the financial services professional (albeit without formal exams and credits). Some of the columns have been "data heavy," including: “The Older Population and Rising National Health Care Costs: A Case of the ‘Compositional Fallacy’?” (January 1993); “Pension Complexity, the Middle Class, and Financial Professionals: New Evidence from the 2001 Survey of Consumer Finances" (November 2003); “Generational Demographics, Gerontology, and Finance: Size Matters, but the Story is More Complex” (July 2009); “How Everybody’s Consumer Opinions Interact with the Gross Domestic Product: A Brief Look at the Index of Consumer Sentiment” (July 2013); “The Twenty-first Century ‘Dependency Ratio’—Older People vs. Older Workers” (November 2013); “The Democratization of Financial Gerontology" (March 2014). One of the foundational concepts of Financial Gerontology is that gerontology is not the study of "old people" but is the study of the multiple processes of aging. A corollary (and conundrum) of this concept is that age differences among individuals and groups of people may not be the result of aging. An alternative explanation, a "rival hypothesis" to maturational-developmental aging, is the generational explanation. In many areas of human attitudes and behavior—financial, social, political, personal—the differences between younger and older people may be caused not by their aging but by their generation, their birth cohort, their personal exposure to a slice of history when they were growing up. Given the direct relevance to financial practitioners of untangling the maturation (aging) vs. generation (cohort) interpretations of financial behavior, a number of Financial Gerontology columns over the years focused on this generational cluster of issues, including: “Communicating With Worried Older Clients: The Impact of ‘Generational Diversity’ ” (May 1992); “Too Much Money for Retirement: Are There Generational Differences?” (November 2005); “Financial Planning for the ‘Senior Sandwich’ Generation,” (March 2006); “Current Trends in Pension Participation: The Impact of Age, Cohort, and Enrollment Practices” (July 2006); “Prospective Age vs. Chronological Age: Why 60 Really is the New 40” (March 2010). Other columns focus more directly on the family and care-giving issues that financial professionals encounter when dealing with "older" men and women (including middle-aged persons); for example: “Personal Care, Home Care, and Long-Term Care Insurance" (November 1991); “Caring For Elderly Parents: Where Do You Look For Help? [Why Does a Financial Planner Need to Know About Geriatric Care?]” (July 1994); “The Financial Services Advisor as a Geriatric Medical Consultant" (July 2002); “Live Long and Prosper: The Challenges of Longevity Planning" (November 2008); "Life Planning and Retirement Planning: Where Do They Intersect?" (January 2016); "Planni