New Challenges for Older Americans and Baby Boomers

Each year, the month of May is proclaimed Older Americans Month in the United States. The Administration on Aging (AoA) develops a theme for Older Americans Month and disseminates the theme to the entire aging network. The 2009 theme is "Living Today for a Better Tomorrow" and "reflects AoA's continued focus on prevention efforts and programs throughout the country that are helping older adults have better health as they age and avoid the risks of chronic disease, disability and injury."

So, the good news is that older Americans and now, enter the Baby Boomer generation, are living longer and enjoying an increased quality of life. The bad news is that the funding needed to finance a longer life span may not be sufficient to support retirees using traditional financial strategies such as Social Security and Medicare.

This is especially true when you include the Baby Boomer generation that will add the largest group of retirees in history to Social Security and Medicare. Another disadvantage is that the number of workers whose FICA payroll taxes will support all these retirees continues to shrink as the average family size decreases. How will President Obama and Congress create reforms that will be fair to older Americans and also be fair to those whose taxes support these popular entitlements?

ProQuest has created a BookCart learning activity to help your students learn more about Social Security reform—"Social Security Reform and Baby Boomers."

This and all ProQuest model BookCarts are complete one-stop learning activities for your students. This saves time for more teaching and learning that too often is consumed in non-productive searching and evaluating relevancy. Each Cart provides (a) examples of essential questions that help students develop 21st-century critical-thinking skills; (b) student directions that guide the research process; (c) call numbers to related print resources; (d) an optional quiz; (e) an information literacy standard; and (f) ProQuest models for written reports and presentations.

You won't find this combination of inquiry-based learning activity support in ONE PLACE in any other online K-12 learning resource.

You can copy, edit, and adapt these models to differentiate instruction for your students. (Learn how.)

• Open the eLibrary Teacher Edition
• Click BookCart Admin link at the top right
• Click the ProQuest Carts tab (800 ProQuest models)
• Type "Social Security Reform and Baby Boomers" in the Search box
• Click the Copy icon in the Actions column to the right of the title
• Click Return to My Local Carts tab to end the copying process

This Cart should be edited in My Local Carts to adapt them for your students:

• Click the BookCart Title—it has "Copy of" as its prefix
• Delete "Copy of" in the Title
• Type your name in the Author boxes
• Type your email address in the email box
• Optional: Edit the essential questions and any other text in the Directions box
• Scroll down and click Save button at the bottom
• Return to My Local Carts.

Assign students to write a report of at least 150 words, citing at least three resources, or a seven-slide/two minute presentation. Reports and presentations should address the following essential questions for critical thinking (you can add or substitute others):

• Why does the baby boomer generation provide the urgency for SS reform?
• What are some of the major proposals to reform SS?
• Which of these proposals do you support and why?
• Which of these proposals do you reject and why?

Type "Social Security reform and baby boomers" in the Search box > type "Social Security or Baby Boomers or reform" in the Document Title box of Advanced Search > click Sort by: Date

Use our custom ProQuest models for written and PowerPoint-style reports.