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Lifestyle/Technology | Over the next 22 years, 80 million Americans will apply for Social Security | Susan Olasky

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Last year Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, at age 62, made history as the first baby boomer (those born between 1946 and 1964) to apply for Social Security. Over the next 22 years, 80 million Americans will join her—and according to Phillip Longman, author of The Empty Cradle, "a huge and unprecedented proportion of this generation is going to be on its own in old age."

Longman in January's The Atlantic pointed out that nearly a fifth of the women born in the mid to late 1950s never had children—that's double the rate of childlessness in the previous generation—and another 17 percent had only one child. He speculates about a future where lonely old people will be "found dead in their homes and apartments . . . only after the stink or a wailing pet dog alerts society."