b'AGING IN THE 21ST CENTURYA Scientific Foundation Social Security and Medicare trust funds built upThe Role of Familiesfor Policy during their working years. Those balances willThe cohort design of the HRS is extremely Good policy at the population level goes handerode and eventually force some adjustment. Thevaluable for analyzing family behavior. The family in hand with better science for understandingHRS is an invaluable source for understandingexperiences of the Baby Boom cohorts differ aging at the individual level. Having been createdhow different policy adjustments would affectin important ways from the older cohorts that in large measure to prepare for the aging of thedifferent segments of the population, and whatpreceded them. Families are changing dramati-Baby Boomers, the HRS is now following thesethe behavioral responses might be. cally with the incidence of divorce, childlessness, cohorts into retirement, to support the analysisand womens labor force participation increas-of policy options and to gauge the impact ofing along with increases in step-families and policy changes on all the older population.cohabitation. Scientists are using the data to document needs,Scientists are using the dataAt the same time, the numbers of siblings to model behavior relevant to policy, and toand children available to individuals are decreas-follow the impact of policies after their introduc- to document needs, to modeling. These changes will likely lead to significant tion. HRS data are widely used by governmentbehavior relevant to policy, and tochanges in the availability of family members to agenciesthe Congressional Budget Office,follow the impact of policies afterprovide support in various dimensions as well as the Treasury Department, the Governmentin the strength of the bonds between them. The Accountability Office, and the Social Securitytheir introduction. steady state design of the HRS provides research-Administrationto evaluate policy proposals.ers with the information needed to assess how these demographic changes affect family relation-Social Security and Medicare ships, interactions and transactions over time The Baby Boom delayed population aging inSimilarly, the future of the Medicare pro- and across cohorts. the US by a full generation relative to what itgram is now intimately tied to the progress ofWith its detailed family and caregiving data, would have been in the absence of that period ofbroad-based health care reform. This createsthe HRS is also uniquely positioned to analyze high fertility and relative to virtually all othergreat opportunities for the HRS to be relevant tothe effects of important developments in public countries at similar levels of development. Asevaluating changes, particularly in the Medicarepolicy regarding long-term care where families, the Boomers approach older ages, we face anprogram (Ayanian et al. 2011). For example, oneprivate insurance, and public insurance are unusually rapid pace of population aging that willline of research has studied health care utiliza- substitutes for one another. quickly catch us up. We have already seen much oftion of HRS participants before and after age 65 the adjustment in the private sectors retirement(the age of Medicare eligibility) showing clear policiesthe abandonment of defined benefitincreases in utilization after Medicare becomes pension plans in favor of defined contributionavailable for those who were previously unin-plans, and the erosion of retiree health plans bothsured (McWilliams et al. 2009).pre- and post-Medicare eligibility. State and local public-sector pensions are now under similar stress. Perhaps the clearest evidence of the Baby Booms beneficence is the positive balances in the 16'