I'll try out an extreme point of view here. Modern culture has failed, we need to replace it. One third of 50 year olds living alone is as good a symptom as any. You could mention the birth rate also. The two are obviously connected.<p>Am I right? Is that too nuts? I just don't see how this ends well. We have effectively socialized old age care, and now we are expecting future generations, an ever-shrinking group, to pay for the pensions of people they have never met.
Gift link: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/us/living-alone-aging.html?unlocked_article_code=F4hTQUzAdG15g7Rz4zWZfDRr_bAMZf8qTvrn-uoMz4gcCSP5mkCLsXpNfqVP0TKdeP_BDQx1pCXo-QSzY9pIbzSBq_Rrk6jvLd1GZlW5dUr08vIiKQ7OFaTr1A8q-0y4DPvGJnH8D7gULm07ulP-GIZI_djJI7gphrMgYJQaPG1tUT-6p9LPYGHvhpsk5MlKMvKsjqZZVpuYun1WdhcyO9T0wi7Hc2OExF0W58blkzd0x4uay-OLF9wtgO6Z8fw7fPBIyhX8vDabGOpRF0njl9Pa-szLc0kAZs1otVapmk9Y-vUMsDSEFIa6nGjHk69LavzGTdqACw&smid=share-url" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/us/living-alone-aging.htm...</a>
> That shift presents issues on housing, health care and personal finance.<p>I wonder why it leaves out the adverse effects on mental health of living alone, which are arguably the worst of the bunch.
I look at this issue and see a market failure. Maybe it is not corporately profitable to provide the pile of services that a population aging in place need (welfare checks, transportation, food, housing...) but it should be possible to build the infrastructure to create the raft out of parts of a solution. Maybe a mix of formal (paid-for) and informal (volunteer, value-add) services. I see this as a necessity for people that do not at the moment face this "cliff". After all, spouses die, children leave and/or live far away. Any person in a stable situation at the moment could easily find themselves in need of these services.
My spouse and I have talked about if one of us dies after we empty the nest, we want to Golden Girls setup with fellow retiree roommates. Wonder why that died out?
Devils advocate for the sake of debate: We're breaking a lot of relationship norms in the recent generations, why shouldn't being married in a nuclear arrangement be one of those?
Denmark's got a great solution: <a href="https://journal.theaou.org/news-and-reviews/the-popularity-of-cohousing-in-demark/" rel="nofollow">https://journal.theaou.org/news-and-reviews/the-popularity-o...</a><p>Too bad such a thing would be deemed "socialist" in the US.