06/08/2021

Rebuilding an Age-integrated Society

How we can come together again

This essay series, “Meeting the Multigenerational Moment,” exposes a generational divide in American society that’s complex and deepening. As the opening essay explains, the United States began the 20^th century as one of the most age-integrated societies in the world and, through a series of well-meaning social innovations including universal education and nursing homes, ended it as one of the most age-segregated. Today, most younger people are in school, middle-age people are at work, and older people are in age-restricted communities; their lives rarely intersect.

This restructuring has left the country ill-prepared for a world with more Americans living longer lives and more generations living at the same time. Collectively, we face a range of social problems, including wasted human resources, generational tension and rampant ageism, an epidemic of loneliness, and splintered movements for social change. Individually, we’re left without the proverbial village, making it harder to raise children and support caregivers, understand the challenges other generations face, find mentors at work and role models in life, and collaborate across divides to solve problems such as racial justice and climate change.

But while it’s true that social innovation helped get us into this mess, we believe it can help us find our way out. The other essays in this series provide considerable reason for optimism, telling the stories of talented social innovators crafting intergenerational solutions to a wide-ranging array of problems.

Please select this link to read the complete article from SSIR.