This New Years Day marks the year that the oldest baby boomers from the 1940's will begin reaching the once thought "retirement age" of 65. With everything that has changed in this half century, where are the baby boomers now and what is in their plans for what's next? More inside.

Dan Barry - nytimes.com

In keeping with a generation’s fascination with itself, the time has come to note the passing of another milestone: On New Year’s Day, the oldest members of the Baby Boom Generation will turn 65, the age once linked to retirement, early bird specials and gray Velcro shoes that go with everything.

Though other generations, from the Greatest to the Millennial, may mutter that it’s time to get over yourselves, this birthday actually matters. According to the Pew Research Center, for the next 19 years, about 10,000 people “will cross that threshold” every day — and many of them, whether through exercise or Botox, have no intention of ceding to others what they consider rightfully theirs: youth.

This means that the 79 million baby boomers, about 26 percent of this country’s population, will be redefining what it means to be older, and placing greater demands on the social safety net. They are living longer, working longer and, researchers say, nursing some disappointment about how their lives have turned out. The self-aware, or self-absorbed, feel less self-fulfilled, and thus are racked with self-pity.

So, then, to those who once never trusted anyone over 30: Raise that bowl of high-fiber granola, antioxidant-rich blueberries and skim milk and give yourself a Happy Birthday toast.

“The stork’s 1946 diaper derby left a controversy today that rocked the cradles from coast to coast,” The Associated Press reported 65 years ago. “The maternal question of the moment was: Who was the first baby born in the new year?”

The wire service named several contenders, from a newborn girl named Darleen in Los Angeles to a baby boy named James in St. Louis — to the infant identified only as “the son of Mr. and Mrs. Aloysius Nachreiner, of Buffalo.” Readers of that news item could not help wondering:

What is to come of this son of Buffalo? Who will he be?

Read more at nytimes.com

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