Dychtwald grew up in Newark, NJ. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from Union Graduate School, a consortium of 30 universities. In 1973, at age 23, he became co-director of SAGE. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, SAGE investigated how newly popular mind/body disciplines, such as yoga, meditation, nutrition therapy, and biofeedback could improve the health and well-being of older adults. At age 27, he published his first book, Bodymind, based on his doctoral thesis, and became an international speaker on holistic health and self awareness. In 1982, Dychtwald joined a panel created by the Office of Technology Assessment, a think tank for the US Congress, to examine how population aging would impact America in the 21st century.In 1983, Dychtwald married Maddy Kent Dychtwald, now a professional speaker and executive at Age Wave. They have two children, Casey and Zak.

In 1986, Dychtwald founded Age Wave and became an entrepreneur and consultant to major corporations, helping them develop products, branding, marketing, and distribution strategies for the “mature market.” Clients have included American Express, Baxter International, CBS Inc., Chrysler, the Coca-Cola Company, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, McDonald’s, Merck, Prudential, RJR Nabisco, Sara Lee, Time Inc., and Warner-Lambert. For example, Age Wave advised Johnson & Johnson in the ideation and development of Tylenol Arthritis Pain medication, and helped Chrysler engineers create cars designed for the physical limitations and needs of older adults. In 1996, he received the American Society on Aging Award for outstanding national leadership in the field of aging.

Age Wave

Ken Dychtwald developed the concept of the age wave', writing a book and starting a company of the same name. “Age wave” refers to a massive population and cultural shift caused by three converging global demographic forces:

• The baby boom. In the middle of the twentieth century, fertility rates increased significantly in the United States, Canada, Australia, and most of Europe. For example, nearly one-third of Americans...76 million people...were born between 1946 and 1964. This period of increased fertility era occurred between the baby busts of the Depression and World War II and the Vietnam war.
• Elevating longevity. Due to advances in public health, nutrition management and medical advances, life expectancy vaulted during the 20th century. For example, in the United States, life expectancy at birth in 1900 was 47. Today, life expectancy at birth in the United States is 78.
• The birth dearth. The baby boom has been followed by a period of declining fertility rates, so that many parts of the world are now experiencing sub-replacement fertility levels.

According to Dychtwald, the “age wave” has already reshaped social and cultural trends, marketplace opportunities, productivity, and consumption patterns. Because of its enormous size and unique preferences and priorities, the men and women of this generation don’t just populate existing lifestages or consumer trends, they transform them. Some examples of trends and events driven by the age wave include:

• Benjamin Spock’s book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, published during the first year of the baby boom, sold at least one million copies a year for eight straight years.
• 1.5 million cans of baby food were consumed in 1953, almost six times as many as a decade before.
• Enrollment in the Cub Scouts doubled between 1950 and 1955.
• The toy industry increased fifteen-fold in the 1940s and 1950s to meet the needs of rapidly growing numbers of children.
• 83 percent of the total population growth in the United States during the 1950s was in the suburbs as parents of the baby boomers moved out of the cities to raise their larger families.
• In the 1960s, teenagers accounted for 55 percent of all soft drink sales, 53 percent of all movie tickets, and 43 percent of all records sold. Fast food franchisers grew 20 percent a year.
• Sales of home gym equipment rose from $75 million in 1982 to over $1 billion in 1985.
• Minivans and SUVs were created and came to dominate the auto industry in the 1980s and 1990s as baby boomers began raising families.
• The age wave will cause a massive slowdown in workforce growth in the coming years. In the next decade, America’s workforce will grow only 4 percent as the boomers begin to retire, down from 12 percent in the current decade and 29 percent in the 1970s when the boomers were entering the workforce.

Dychtwald argues that as the boomer generation continues to mature, life’s second half is about to be further transformed, and that in the next several decades, this age wave will shift the epicenter of consumer activity from a focus on youth to the needs, challenges, and aspirations of maturing consumers. Because of the aging of the boomer generation, we are about to see an explosion of maturity-oriented products and services such as: nutraceuticals, cosmeceuticals, fitness communes, re-careering, philanthropreneuring, career-transition coordinators, smart homes, long-term care and longevity insurance, equity-release, reverse mortgages, college campus-based retirement housing and Internet cemeteries. However, the age wave will also put unprecedented pressure on families, communities and governments as multiplying numbers of older adults strain entitlements, eldercare, healthcare delivery and pensions.

Middlescence

In 1988, Dychtwald coined the term “middlescence.” He noticed that with the: 1) the modern postponement of old age that is being caused by extended longevity, and 2) the multiplying numbers of people who were reinventing themselves post-youth, a new middlescent lifestage was rising up between 40 and 65. Like adolescence (identified and named by Dr. Stanley Hall in 1904), middlescence is emerging because a sizable group is not quite ready for life’s next stages...in this case, late adulthood and old age. Also like adolescence, Dychtwald believes that already this new middlescence will be accompanied by some identity disorientation, it will likely turn out to be a period of high-spirited growth and ascension, not retreat and decline. Building upon Erik Erikson’s renowned theories regarding their being a unique psychosocial crisis accompanying each lifestage, Dychtwald believes that middlescence is a time for the deeper and further development of self, and is a period of tension between resilience and brittleness. He first popularized this notion in his 1990 videotape program “Middlescence and Beyond,” and wrote more extensively about this new lifestage in his 1999 book Age Power: How the 21st Century will be Ruled by the New Old (J. P. Tarcher). His 2006 article — co-written with Bob Morison and Tamara Erickson - in the Harvard Business Review titled “Managing Middlescence” applied his psychosocial theories to workforce management.

In 2006 Dychtwald served as editorial director for a quarterly series in the New York Times Magazine entitled “Empowered Living.”

In 2007, he directed and hosted the PBS special The Boomer Century, produced by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Joel Westbrook and Neil Steinberg and written by two-time Academy Award winner Mark Harris. The program included interviews with famous boomers, academics and authors including Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Julian Bond, Erica Jong, Eve Ensler, Lester Thurow and Alvin Toffler.

His most recent PBS special “With Purpose” aired nationwide in 2009 to coincide with the book release of the same title.

Ken Dychtwald has served as a fellow of the World Economic Forum and presented at Davos. He is a board member of the American Society on Aging.

American Demographics Magazine honored him as the most influential marketer to baby boomers over the past quarter century. His article in The Harvard Business Review, “It’s Time to Retire Retirement,” was awarded the McKinsey Award, tying for first place with Peter Drucker.

Dychtwald has presented to more than two million people including corporate, association, social service, and government groups. He is frequently quoted in national media such as The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, Business Week, U.S. News and World Report, The Economist, 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, Today Show, and BBC.

Dychtwald has created and overseen national and global studies on key population aging trends and implications in partnership with companies such as Charles Schwab, HSBC, Ameriprise, Merrill Lynch, Viacom, and Allianz. These studies have covered topics such as emerging models of aging and retirement around the world, retirement attitudes and preparation among baby boomers, boomer attitudes and expectations for media and entertainment, the stages of retirement, retirement preparation among four generations of Americans, and the impact of the recent recession on retirement.