What if…? What if some of the trends touted in the media came true during the next few decades? Here's American Demographics' contribution to millennial hype

American Demographics, Dec, 1997 by Diane Crispell, Shannon Dortch, Brad Edmondson, Nancy Ten Kate, Matthew Klein, Matthew Cravatta

Since 1990, smaller shares of both men and women aged 25 to 29 have stuck with college long enough to earn a bachelor's degree. Some of this decline may be due to changes in the way the Census Bureau measures educational attainment. Even so, there's no disputing that women continue to earn the lion's share of bachelor's degrees. The last year men earned the majority of sheepskins was 1981.

If the share of bachelor's degrees earned by men continues to shrink at the same rate as it has since 1870, the last American man will graduate from college in 2144. This could happen more quickly if the share of men who are incarcerated continues to grow rapidly.

If women were the only college-educated workers around, the jobs they do might become devalued, in which case employers could realize substantial payroll savings. Even so, the number of college-educated wives outearning less-educated husbands would undoubtedly skyrocket. Other developed countries are further along in realizing this scenario; women earned 63 percent of the bachelor's degrees awarded in Norway in 1991.

boomers couldn't retire? "The savings crisis is far worse than previously imagined. Unless baby boomers become significantly more frugal, many will be forced to accept dramatically lowered standards of living during retirement, or else postpone retirement indefinitely." --Dr. B. Douglas Bernheim (The Merrill Lynch Baby Boom Retirement Index: Update '97) Blaring sirens, warning bells, crunch time--these phrases pepper reports on the retirement prospects of America's roughly 76 million baby boomers. The idea is that profligate boomers have frittered their wages on high living and face economic risk when their working years end.

What if boomers get old without enough savings to sustain them? They may work until they die. Life expectancy for the oldest boomers is 78.5 years, so they could lose out on almost 15 years of golf and bingo. This would put a damper on some of the anticipated recreational boom. Ever-toiling boomers couldn't spend four weeks in Greece or travel America in an RV.

If boomers didn't retire, many would die on the job. Between 1991 and 1995, 4,612 people died of heart attacks while on the job. The majority of workplace deaths today are due to accidents, but that would change if legions of 75-year-old workers succumbed to old-age diseases on the spot. As it is, workers aged 65 and older are four times as likely as younger ones to die from job-related causes.

Before they kicked the bucket, never-quitting boomers would wreak havoc on younger workers. Employee attrition would slow, and competition between older and younger workers would intensify. In 1996, less than 4 million Americans aged 65 and older were in the paid labor force, accounting for 3 percent of workers. If men and women currently aged 45 to 54 kept up the same work rates they have now (82 percent), we would have 26 million workers aged 65 to 74 in 2020.

This is unlikely, however. Economists disagree on whether boomers are heading toward a financial emergency. The widely publicized Merrill Lynch Baby Boom Retirement Index reports that in 1997, boomers are saving 39 percent of the funds they will need for retirement. "Don't believe it," says financial writer Jane Bryant Quinn in a December 1996 Newsweek article. "For middle-class workers, the news ain't all bad."