"Golant has repeatedly set the gold standard for carrying out innovative and insightful analysis of the changing character of older adults' living environments," said Lenard W. Kaye, a social work professor and director of the University of Maine's Center on Aging. "In focusing on the evolving living arrangements and housing accommodations of leading-edge baby boomers, Golant rightly extends discussion from gloom-and-doom characterization of institutional care to a more-balanced conversation that incorporates the emergent and diverse lifestyles of tomorrow's active elders."

Census figures project the U.S. population between 65 and 74 will increase 16 percent by 2010, Golant said. By the time the first baby boomers turn 65 between 2011 and 2020, however, the 65 to 74 age group is expected to grow by nearly 50 percent.

As they reach retirement age, more boomers will stay in the houses in which they have lived for most of their adult lives instead of moving to nursing homes, he said. That trend will be prompted not only by improved health, but also by delayed retirement tied to rising eligibility ages for Social Security, and smaller returns on stocks and savings deposits accompanying the recent downturn in the U.S. economy, said Golant, who also is affiliated with UF's Center for Gerontological Studies.

These older Americans who choose to stay put are among the growing number living in a hodgepodge of housing arrangements that are neither planned nor targeted to the elderly Golant's DOUERs. A second group of DOUERs seeks out housing considered highly desirable for older adults even though it is not identified as elderly housing.

"They may move into a condominium or subdivision that's not marketed specifically to older people," he said. "The draw is often the social ambience of living with others at the same stages in their lives and who e
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Contact: Stephen Golant
golant@geog.ufl.edu
352-392-0494
University of Florida
19-Feb-2004