In December 2010, The Globe and Mail wrote this about the author and his latest book: The effects of an aging population will touch every family, every workplace, every public debate in the West over the next 50 years. As Ted Fishman’s new book Shock of Gray explains, nothing will ever be the same. Fishman, a journalist, former trader and author of China Inc., has produced a deeply reported book that traces the scale of demographic change across the globe: from Japan, mired in a demographics-driven economic slump, to the depressed industrial heartland of the United States, where growth means more care homes, to Spain, a country that bristles at immigration but grows increasingly dependent on migrant labour.Read that Globe and Mail piece here. Also in December of 2010, U.S. News and World Report invoke the author and his book in this way:
[Holding] on to a job in your 60s or finding a new one can be difficult. "Workforce participation among older workers is higher than it has ever been and so is unemployment," says Ted Fishman, author of Shock of Gray, a book about the world's aging population. Once unemployed, older workers generally remain out of work longer than their younger counterparts. The average duration of unemployment for those age 55 and older in November 2010 was 45 weeks, 12 weeks longer than it takes the typical younger person to find a job. When Marty Colletti of Austin, Texas, a former account manager for Dell, was laid off in March 2009, it took her nearly two years to find a new job at a comparable level. Colletti, who will turn 65 in May, began a new job at a smaller company as a search engine optimization consultant in December 2010. "I tend to attribute my age to it taking so long to get a job," she says.
[2010-12-06 13:00:00] How is the increasing average age of the world's population affecting society and ultimately altering our lives? We'll spend this hour with journalist and writer Ted Fishman, whose new book is "Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World's Population and How it Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation" (Scribner, 2010). Fishman will address the World Affairs Council of Dallas Fort Worth on Tuesday.
BROOKE: You can see over here on the left that even in this sort of Class C strip mall everything's open. There isn't an empty storefront there that I can see. No, I can't see a single one. This contrast is documented by a group called the American Human Development Project. It's been looking at income, longevity, and education in congressional districts across the U.S. as part of its new assessment of well-being called "The Measure of America." The group calculates that in terms of well-being people in the Ninth District of southwest Virginia are 20 years behind the national average. The richer, healthier, more educated Northerners are where the country will be decades from now. Crossing Virginia is like taking a time machine from the past to the future. Sarah Burd-Sharps is the report's co-author. SARAH BURD-SHARPS: We're trying to get people to recognize that having groups falling badly behind in this country is not good for those groups themselves, but it's also really bad for our competitiveness and for our future. In Virginia, a child born today in the poor district is likely to die eight years before a child born in the richer district. In the north, typical household income is more than double, $51,000 compared to $21,000 a year.
We talk demographics with reporter Dante Chinni. In his book, "Our Patchwork Nation: The Surprising Truth About the 'Real America,'" Chinni attempts to go beyond red and blue states in analyzing the politics and world view of Americans. He divides the country into 12 community types based on characteristics such as income level, racial composition, employment and religion.
CHARLIE ROSE: Joel Kotkin is here. He is a distinguished
presidential fellow in urban futures at Capp University in California.
His new book is called "The Next 100 Million -- America in 2050." This
book imagines what is America will look like 40 years from now when the
population will grow from 300 to 400 million.
I am pleased to have Joel Kotkin at this table. Welcome.
JOEL KOTKIN: Great to be here.
CHARLIE ROSE: So tell me how you came to write this? What does a
geographer do?
JOEL KOTKIN: Well, geography is one of those skills that`s
declined, like history, over time. You try to understand how people fit
in with space, with place, with this particular location.
And the reason I came to the book was one thing. One is that after
we had 300 million I asked a demographer friend, well, when we do we get
to 400 hundred million. He said about 2050. I said, well, somebody
ought to be writing about this.
CHARLIE ROSE: It was a nice sort of timeline.
JOEL KOTKIN: It`s a milestone like 300 million was. And, you
never know, we never thought we could support 300 million people, and in
many ways the country`s better than it was when it was 200 million.
And the other thing was I felt like the -- and I have to say this
as a boomer myself. I think we boomers left -- are leaving leave our
CHARLIE ROSE: Joel Kotkin is here. He is a distinguished
presidential fellow in urban futures at Capp University in California.
His new book is called "The Next 100 Million -- America in 2050." This
book imagines what is America will look like 40 years from now when the
population will grow from 300 to 400 million.
I am pleased to have Joel Kotkin at this table. Welcome.
JOEL KOTKIN: Great to be here.
CHARLIE ROSE: So tell me how you came to write this? What does a
geographer do?
JOEL KOTKIN: Well, geography is one of those skills that`s
declined, like history, over time. You try to understand how people fit
in with space, with place, with this particular location.
And the reason I came to the book was one thing. One is that after
we had 300 million I asked a demographer friend, well, when we do we get
to 400 hundred million. He said about 2050. I said, well, somebody
ought to be writing about this.
CHARLIE ROSE: It was a nice sort of timeline.
JOEL KOTKIN: It`s a milestone like 300 million was. And, you
never know, we never thought we could support 300 million people, and in
many ways the country`s better than it was when it was 200 million.
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