Aging on a dying planet
- Em R. O'Hara & Hannah Gokaslan
- Jun 19
- 10 min read
Updated: Jun 25
By Em R. O'Hara and Hannah Gokaslan
June 19, 2025
According to the internet, financial advisors, and parental figures, adults in their mid-thirties residing in the United States should have at least two times the amount of their current salaries saved up in retirement savings. Different sources offer different advice with monetary milestones spliced out by age brackets. We are, in theory, supposed to be squirreling away designated retirement funds to supplement our social security. At a time when most people in the United States can’t afford a $500.00 emergency expense, it becomes pretty difficult to fathom how this is supposed to work if you’re not making at least six figures.
Instead of living off interest from earnings made now, imagine this: you have all that you need. Instead of worrying about the future or dividing life into your “working years” and your “golden years,” you’re just living. Instead of clinging to fears of social (in)security, you have a community of people who care about and for you, with mutually beneficial support in place including intergenerational living. You’re teaching a child how to play cards while they teach you how to code a game. At a time of social-ecological economic polycrises, should we not think of alternatives to this approach? Rather than relying on interest, shouldn’t we take an interest in relying on each other? In this blog post, we’re not advocating for working more, saving more money, or imposing demurrage—we’re calling for a more transformative view of systems related to retirement, savings, and finance altogether, and offering connections around how to celebrate life-affirming perspectives on getting older.
Rather than relying on interest, shouldn’t we take an interest in relying on each other?
As the transition to a degrowth world becomes more mainstream, it raises questions about how we will live our final years. Will we have social security income? How will we care for our elders? In this blog post, we explore what a more collective and self-sustaining system of [elder]care might look like.
Mainstream or neoclassical economics argues that increased income for one’s productive labor will result in improved livelihood(s). However, such framing remains focused on “growthism” despite its negative consequences on individual, societal and planetary levels. This weakness in underlying reasoning—that economic growth can continue at current rates and benefit humanity as a result—is based on the flawed assumption that everyone can live at current energy consumption levels in the future. Looking beyond unfettered growth, arguments have been made for degrowth which essentially means consuming less for a “decent” life.
An economy that metabolizes fewer planetary resources while enhancing wellbeing for the planet’s humans is purported under degrowth. What’s good for the planet is good for its people, right? One would think. However, some argue that degrowth has a marketing problem. Advocates for degrowth face political barriers to achieve the movement’s goals, especially as it pertains to wellbeing. For example, fiscally sustainable welfare states and their mechanisms, such as social security, are “invariably predicated upon future growth” (p. 793). To degrow would involve eliminating or decreasing interest accumulation. In other words, degrowth rejects the surplus that our current retirement structure relies on.
In envisioning a future that does not center economic growth, what do one’s “golden years” look like? Are there alternative ways to think about retirement and eldercare? How do these visions and existing realities align with degrowth? In essence, what does degrowth mean for aging on a dying planet?
Degrowing social security and pensions
Under capitalism, saving, including retirement, is centered on interest: The main goal is that, over time, one’s investments will grow, depending on market factors, ultimately contributing to a secure and comfortable retirement. Under degrowth, can there be interest? Can there be savings? Several scholars have set out to answer these questions. For example, in “How to pay for saving the world: Modern Monetary Theory for a degrowth transition,” Olk, et al. (2023) argue that degrowth and modern monetary theory (MMT) must be combined when shaping socio-economic-ecological policies.
Despite some suggestions that traditional pay-as-you-go social security is an anti-growth welfare policy, studies have shown that the redistribution of wealth can make economic growth palatable across social classes. Welfare policies can tie economic growth to “investment in infrastructure or public education,” increasing public support for growth-oriented policies. Even in countries touted for the success of their welfare system, such as Sweden, the welfare state often functions as an extension of the capitalist one, reinforcing wage-labor positions and relying on a strong employment ethic.
At the core of these critiques is the connection between social security and pensions with productive labor that often contributes to growth-oriented policies and industries. With this scaling down under degrowth, we would arguably have less earnings and a smaller pool of income from which taxes and interest can be drawn. Is it possible to maintain these welfare systems, and therefore, to have a ‘retirement’ in a post-growth society?
Fiona Dukelow explores the idea of “sustainable welfare,” writing that:
While advocating for a job-guarantee might seem counter-intuitive in the context of efforts to reduce the centrality of work in post-growth, it does allow the possibility of thinking how work could be transformed and paradoxically be made less central as part of more sustainable and autonomous lives under an eco-social rationality. (Dukelow, 2022, p. 505)
Others have taken on the idea of social security and pensions in envisioning and modeling a degrowth future for Western industrialized countries. Antoine Monserand developed a model of the pension system in a degrowing economy which showed “that there is no problem for the financing of a pay-as-you-go pension scheme in the context of reduction of consumption and production, even in the case where retired people go on with their previous non-ecological lifestyle (Monserand, 2019).” Jonquil Lowe examines how pension systems could “alter the nature of economic activity in beneficial ways” (2024, p. 36). Reflecting on a range of pension system inequalities among generations, from income to gender, Lowe identifies climate change as having the potential to destabilize pension funding.
So maybe retirement is a viable option even in a post-growth economy, but does that mean saving money for the end of life is an idea worth holding on to? What if retirement was not an end goal, but integrated earlier in life? What would that mean for the role of elder communities in society outside of their families or residential care facilities?
What if retirement was not an end goal, but integrated earlier in life?
Eldercare and intergenerational living
Rethinking elder care doesn’t just influence communities in one’s later years. It could also mean reintegrating generational knowledge in education systems and adding to the solutions put forth by scholars:
Degrowth scholarship debunks the myth that continued economic growth in high-income nations is necessary for improving social outcomes and outlines how such improvements can be achieved with less aggregate production and less resource and energy use. A core principle of degrowth is that expanding universal public services, shortening the working week, introducing a public job guarantee, and reducing inequality would de-link human well-being from growth and make it possible to scale down less-necessary forms of production without negative social consequences. (Olk et al., 2023, p. 1).
Intergenerational housing models (IGMs) are beginning to gain traction, even in the U.S. where the for-profit elder care industry currently dominates the landscape. Even for elders who have family living nearby, those relatives often have their own fiscal responsibilities, making it difficult to take time as a caregiver for someone else. In the U.S., the labor of elder care is often outsourced to retirement homes, assisted living facilities, and home care aides. This separates and isolates elder communities from the rest of society, shaping the way they live, age, and die. Not to mention, elder care is expensive and incredibly profitable:
According to the CDC, 70% of nursing homes have partial if not full for-profit ownership
Profits for assisted living facilities increased by 34.5% between 2013 and 2020 (U.S. Census).
Revenue for services for the elderly and disabled populations was estimated at $57 billion in 2020 (US Census).
For-profit elder care facilities are often unsafe for residents and staff while bringing in large revenue for the for-profit corporations that own them. In a degrowth transition, there would be no space for these sorts of forms of elder care. What does that mean for older populations? Where do they live, and how do they access healthcare? We look to examples of alternatives happening around the world:
You may have heard of “Transition Towns” i.e., living within one’s means and having one’s basic needs met. But have you heard of “Dementia Towns”? Throughout Japan, a community health worker model (otherwise known as “CHW model”) has been adopted to provide senior citizens experiencing dementia with information and resources.
“Faced with spiraling health and welfare costs and a shortage of professional caregivers, towns and cities across Japan are attempting to move away from a medicine-based, institutional approach towards care to one that involves the entire community (McCurry, 2018).”
By centering elders within its welfare policies, the town of Matsudo has creatively harnessed community power through care. This is one example of how, alongside the political economy shifts under degrowth, socio-cultural shifts need to occur as well: As we find alternatives to unfettered economic growth, we also need to trouble the myth of linear growth in life. Progression of life in the Ecozoic might look like living well in the present rather than putting off one’s ‘best’ years for the future. What would this mean for how we save, if at all? Not only is saving a surplus of income for retirement incompatible with the principles of degrowth from an economic perspective but leaving it behind also means less of a focus on individual retirement strategies and shifting towards more collective webs of care might prove beneficial under degrowth.
Currently, socio-economic culture in many parts of the United States is centered on ‘maximum’ productivity to the point of stress, injury, or death to maximize savings once an individual stops producing productive labor i.e., placing the emphasis on individual savings for one’s future retirement. Instead, the U.S. could look to countries like Japan and adopt their CHW model(s) of eldercare, tailoring for the varied needs of states and municipalities.
By creating more holistic, inclusive housing options in retirement such as IGMs as seen in the Netherlands, Germany, and France, more communal support would be in place to assist those who have reached [the] retirement age. This support would also benefit folks who are still working post-retirement age. We can look to existing efforts of IGM and plans for increased multigenerational housing in places like Seattle, Washington. In addition to architectural and planning policy solutions, lifting up multigenerational living as already championed by many cultures within the U.S. and elsewhere could provide a pathway to collectivist emphasis over the individual.
By transitioning towards a more collective paradigm, eldercare systems could reach a state of self-sufficiency. Moving from individual savings reliant on capital gains into systems that may better sustain those in retirement, elder care systems can serve as a leverage point for degrowth. Therefore, we should start to think about our end because, as they say, there’s no time like the present.
References
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Bellettini, G., and Berti Ceroni, C. (1999) Is social security really bad for growth? Review of Economic Dynamics, 2(4), 796-819. doi: 10.1006/redy.1998.0050
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Center for Disease Control (CDC), Nursing Home Care Data, Accessed December 2, 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/nursing-home-care.htm
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Emily joined the Leadership for the Ecozoic (L4E) community in August 2024 as a Sustainable Development, Policy, Economics and Governance doctoral student and Gund Institute for Environment Graduate Fellow at the University of Vermont. As a L4E PhD Fellow, Em hopes to continue (un)learning the field of development. Her research interests include feminist political ecology (FPE), communities and economies of care, and labor as well as tacit and explicit forms of knowing. Working as a Research Assistant for Dr. Joe Ament, she is researching the intersection of FPE and monetary policy with an emphasis on understanding value theory from the perspective of reproductive labor. This endeavor builds upon her independent, collaborative, and academic research on gender and development theories and applications, including an analysis of intimate partner violence with a combined framework of FPE and feminist economics. She brings over a decade of cross-sector experience in strategic communications and operations—including program and project coordination, management, and direction with demonstrated skills in community outreach and engagement, research and analysis, and training and facilitation—and is a community organizer with FreeHer Vermont where she advocates for abolition.
Hannah joins the L4E community as a PhD student in the Rubenstein School of the Environment. She first moved to Vermont in 2017 where she studied geography and environmental studies at Middlebury College. After graduating, she spent four years in Alaska working an array of jobs, from environmental education and trail maintenance to land-use permitting. She enjoys long days outside on foot or bike, learning ceramics, and reading, among many other things.
Hannah's research interests at the University of Vermont focus on interrogating visions of just transitions, particularly in the North, centering non-Western knowledge, and incorporating the range of disciplines in the L4E community.
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