Expanding Choices for the Next Stage of Work

11/28/2011 - 10:23:23am

Retire poor? Grind away at your current job? Find part-time work that a teenager could (and probably wants to) do? Many Americans planning their next stage of life want better choices.

One such choice is an encore career, a category that recognizes that what many people want from work changes after midlife.

Big Names – and Big Money – Back Encore Learning

06/23/2011 - 03:19:38pm

Some savvy investors and entrepreneurs think encore careers are a hot market category.

The Economist: All Hands on Deck

04/12/2011 - 04:55:46pm

With government “entitlements” like Social Security back on the table, the debate over retirement ages will be in full swing.

That makes last week's cover package of The Economist – “70 or Bust!” – both timely and provocative even if the magazine's conclusion that pension and Social Security benefits need to be cut makes many people cringe.

See the (Real) World With Nick Kristof

12/12/2010 - 09:43:40pm

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has gotten the message from his readers: changing the world is not just for young people.

“Seniors, dig out your anti-malaria mosquito netting now,” Kristof wrote in his Sunday column, in which he announced that for his fifth annual “Win-a-Trip Contest” he’ll for the first time take someone over 60 along with a college student.

Scoring a Fiscal and Social Win-Win

12/02/2010 - 08:38:37pm

It's safe to say the debt commission's proposal to raise Social Security's retirement age to 69 has more to do with trimming finances than it does with a compelling vision of longer working lives.

But there is a bountiful fiscal and social harvest to be reaped by accelerating the growing trend toward working longer -- by choice, not fiat. It's not a stretch to say encore careers could help drive the kind of economic prosperity and job creation needed to make the debt more manageable.

"Smart Retirement Decisions" to Reduce the Debt

11/11/2010 - 10:27:40pm

Receiving almost no attention in the uproar over the debt-reduction plan from the co-chairs of President Obama's fiscal commission is the final proposal: "Promote Smart Retirement Decisions."

Encore Careers Go to Washington

10/20/2010 - 02:44:10pm

In the midst of the highly polarized debate over Social Security reform, Civic Ventures is making some headway in getting consideration of encore careers as a serious policy option that can attract support from all sides.

Human Capital to Take Social Ventures to Scale

10/12/2010 - 02:01:36pm

I spent a few days last week at SoCap10, the big "social capital markets" conference in San Francisco. I posted reports from the conference here and here on Dowser.org, the new social entrepreneurship site founded by David Bornstein, a senior adviser to Civic Ventures.

$100,000 Prize for Intergenerational Innovation

10/06/2010 - 12:18:03pm

Amid all the fearmongering about a coming war between the generations comes a welcome antidote: the new Eisner Prize for Intergenerational Excellence, which will recognize individuals and organizations "uniting multiple generations, especially seniors and youth, to bring about positive and lasting changes in their community."

Choices for Older Workers

09/21/2010 - 12:23:24pm

The New York Times published my letter to the editor yesterday, in response to their front-page story the other day, "Retiring Later Is Hard Road for Laborers."