If you turn on the news you are bound to hear about the baby boomer population. Today the primary concern is the amount of baby boomers from this group of people who will all be retiring at once. However, if you do not know anything about the baby boomer population you might wonder why this is even something to be concerned about.

The Baby Boomer Generation

In the year 1946 there was a boom in births in the United States. The number of births jumped from 2.8 million births in 1945 to 3.4 million births in 1946. This was due to so many soldiers coming home from the war. However, the end of the boom is quite unclear. This generation has been known as the baby boomer generation and is what created the baby boomer population that we see today. Prior to this year, birth rates were lower so there have been less elderly people taxing the system. Now that so many of these baby boomers are reaching retirement age, there comes a very real concern with issues like Medicaid, social security, and other options currently available to senior citizens. The United States has survived for many years with these systems, but there have never been this many people about to need the services all at once. Lawmakers are scrambling to come up with some way to help the baby boomer population without completely depleting the United State’s resources.

Possible Options

The United States government has been throwing around several options for how to deal with this surplus of elderly people. One option that is often talked about on the radio and television news networks to help with the baby boomer population’s Social Security problems is to privatize social security. In general, republicans and conservatives have been for this from a personal responsibility perspective. From their perspective, the baby boomer population should be responsible for their own retirement, and a lot of people agree with this. However, the democrats and most liberals think that Social Security needs to be reformed, not done away with all together. This is because there are many people who do not have the means to access private social security, and in a way people already have private social security through retirement funds such as 401Ks. Another option that is thrown around to help with the aging baby boomer population is to bring about a universal health care system for the country. While this would help everyone and not just the baby boomer population, this group of new elderly could certainly benefit from a universal health care system.