New Report: Baby Boomers and Civic Engagement

Posted by on January 28, 2005

[posted to Higher Education Service-Learning listserv]

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out “Reinventing Aging: Baby Boomers and Civic Engagement.” You can read excerpts and order a copy from http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/chc/reinventingaging/.

The report responds to the concern that, compared to their parents’ generation, boomers have “done less by every measure of civic engagement, including rates of voting and joining community groups.”

It suggests that ” large scale efforts will be needed to recruit boomers as volunteers,” especially because they will move gradually into retirement, and “contrary to conventional wisdom, more people volunteer in mid-life than in retirement.” That “the current language of aging” and volunteering “is obsolete … may be an impediment to change” and needs to be redefined.