By anyone's standards, Ralph and Sylvia Turco of Livonia, Mich., have led long and fulfilling lives. Sylvia, 69, has been a successful writer, editor, radio and TV personality. Ralph, 84, has been a high-ranking police officer, a politician and a merchant. They have launched and grown several successful entrepreneurial ventures and hobnobbed with the elite of show business and politics.

Certainly, they are of an age where they might be expected to retire into obscurity. Just as certainly, they could survive more than comfortably in such an existence. Yet each chooses to continue working. Sylvia is currently working on a book about women in dysfunctional relationships, and she and Ralph together manage a variety of entertainment ventures including national beauty pageants.

"We are not comfortable with the idea of retiring," Sylvia states simply. "We have friends who've retired, and they seem to do nothing."

Sociologists and economists say that Ralph and Sylvia Turco may well represent the new face of retirement in the 21st century. While their continued involvement in work-based activities into their 70s and 80s may not be typical of their generation, it promises to become much more common among members of the generations behind them.

Many entrepreneurs see business ownership as a retirement investment.

While the popular perception of retirement among U.S. workers has long been a sort of pleasant swan song for the American Dream, the reality of retirement in the future -- even the present -- is quite different. With the average retirement age heading upward and the resources available from government programs such as Social Security moving in the opposite direction, more and more Americans are likely to continue working well into their 60s and 70s.

Some, like the Turcos, will work because they want to, but a much greater number will simply have no choice. When two economists polled 1,200 baby boomers two years ago for a Merrill Lynch-sponsored study called "Saving the American Dream," a reduced expectation of future government assistance in retirement was clearly reflected in the survey responses.

Asked if they thought the government had made financial promises to their generation that it would not be able to keep, 84.9% said yes. Asked if they thought future retirees would face a personal financial crisis 20 years hence, 85.8% said they did.

CHANGES AHEAD

Those expectations are setting the stage for some important changes in the traditional concept of retirement. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median retirement age dropped precipitously from 1950 to 1990 -- down to 63 from 67. But recent studies indicate that decline has bottomed out and begun to reverse itself.

So here's the situation: A worker earning $50,000 the year before retirement can expect Social Security -- at full benefit levels -- to replace just 37% of that income. Currently, pensions make up just 20% of the typical retiree's income, and the average 65-year-old can expect to live at least another 17 years.

Given all the above factors, it seems a sure bet that continued work into their 60s and 70s will be a part of many baby boomers' future.

In his book, "The Retirement Myth," journalist Craig Karpel paints a grim picture of millions of baby boomer "dumpies" (destitute unprepared mature people) eking out a hand-to-mouth existence rather than swatting golf balls in the Florida sun. However, he also acknowledges that this scenario is not preordained to occur.

Like many experts in this field, Karpel envisions work beyond traditional retirement age as the key. "For us, quitting paid work in one's sixties and turning to a life of pure play, now a virtually universal middle class expectation, will become what it previously was in America and still is in most of the world: a dream for many, a goal for some, attained by few," he writes.

The drop in the average retirement age has bottomed out and is on the rise.

Actually, says Dallas Salisbury, president of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, if that type of retirement has been a "universal middle class expectation," it has been a very unrealistic one.

"The vast majority of defined benefit retirement plans (the type generally offering the most generous pay-outs) have always been offered only at about the 7,000 largest companies in America, and there has been very little shift in that regard," he says. "The [pure play] retirement scenario has never had real relevance except to the top 20% of earners."

Despite the flawed vision of the quality of retirement commonly held, expectations of a lower retirement age have been met consistently, with the median retirement age dropping by four years since the end of World War II.

Many economists and sociologists have been predicting further drops in that median age through the first decade of the next century, but one voice that has been consistently contrarian in that regard has recently been proved correct.

The latest data show that the decline in median retirement age is clearly over," says Richard Burkhauser, an economist at Syracuse University's Maxwell School, the nation's leading public policy graduate school. "From 1985 to 1993, the number of men actively participating in the labor force increased by more than a full percentage point, and the number of 65-year-olds working has held steady at 30.5%, halting a four-decade decline."

Burkhauser serves on a technical committee of the 1995 Advisory Council, a group of public-and private-sector experts convened to give advice to the Social Security Administration. With the retirement age at which workers can collect full Social Security benefits already scheduled to go up to 67, the Advisory Council is poised to recommend it be raised even higher, he says.

WORKING LONGER

"The clear signal from the federal government is that people are going to be expected to work longer, and that signal will make it more expensive for private firms to fund the kind of early retirement programs that have helped fuel the drop in retirement age," Burkhauser says.

Since the average baby-boomer household is saving only about a third of what it will need to live comfortably in retirement, continued work beyond traditional retirement age by many Americans seems guaranteed. The Turcos' son, Michael, in fact, is preparing for just that eventuality.

Michael Turco is not counting on much help from government programs in his retirement scenario. "I think I'll have to rely mainly on myself," says the 35-year-old Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., computer specialist. "Planning it out that way is certainly the safest route. Society has changed so much over the past 30 years. I have no idea what the world will be like in another 30."

With a wife and two young children, Michael has already experienced firsthand the vagaries of corporate life in the 1990s. Despite playing a key role in Mattel Toys Inc.'s computerization efforts from 1988 to 1994, he found himself downsized out of a job when the company merged with Fisher-Price Inc. Although he is thriving as a self-employed consultant, the experience was an important wake-up call.

The Social Security Administration may increase eligibility age for benefits.

Like many of his contemporaries, Michael Turco expects to continue working well beyond traditional retirement age. Accommodating the prospect of some 76 million graying baby boomers with similar expectations of continued, meaningful employment may require some radical changes in society. Some feel the key will be providing access to relevant training.

The American Association of Retired Persons (which, despite its name and reputation as a fierce defender of the retirement life style, advocates the right of older people to continue working) has published a report called "Lifelong Learning: Investing in People as Social Insurance." In it, AARP calls for the use of Social Security trust funds as a source of job training loans for aging workers.

The organization has also broadened its definition of retirement to include "phased retirement, retirement from one job to another and new careers." Its financial planning guide for soon-to-be retirees bluntly acknowledges that, "Many people plan to work in retirement, and this may be an idea you want to adopt."

Older workers have many skills that translate well to owning a business.

Since the rising eligibility age for Social Security will make it increasingly expensive for companies to push out older workers, some can expect to continue doing the same jobs they do today.

Even if they stay in the same line of work, however, many employees will begin looking for alternatives to full-time employment, especially as they get into their mid-60s and beyond, says Roger Herman, a futurist, consultant and author of "Turbulence: Challenges and Opportunities in the World of Work."

Flex-time, part-time and consulting arrangements will have increasing appeal, both to aging workers and their employers. A growing number of older people will rely on multiple sources of income, such as home-based businesses and one or more part-time positions.

"Employers will be able to tap into a trained, reliable, mature work force on an as-needed basis," Herman points out. "They won't have to pay for traditional benefits packages, and they won't have to come up with the kind of make-work activities often needed to justify a full-time position."

For older workers interested in pursuing new challenges, Herman says there will be no shortage of opportunities. Among them are the traditional service industries from retailing to hospitality. He also predicts a boom in information services and health care and the emergence of an entire new class of service jobs targeted to meeting the needs of younger, two-income families.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

"One of the positions we see opening up in the near future is a neighborhood concierge," Herman says. There will also be increasing demand for instructors at community colleges and continuing education programs. Partially employed older workers will maintain a life-long interest in learning about both work-related and leisure topics, he predicts.

Many service companies value older employees for their strong work ethic and respect for authority, but the coming wave of boomer retirees will raise new challenges for employers, says Charles Schewe, a principal in the consulting firm Lifestage Matrix Marketing and a professor of marketing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's Graduate School of Management.

"There will be a different perspective on the need for self-fulfillment from work when the boomers hit this stage," says Schewe. "The kind of work they will find fulfilling will have to have some quality-of-workplace-life aspects that present-day retirement-age people are not demanding." The baby boomers are less work-focused than the generation of workers who grew up during the Great Depression, Schewe says. "They place much greater value on things such as recreational opportunities, quality of life and leisure time. There is no reason to believe those attitudes will change as they age."

Older workers staying on in their jobs for longer periods of time will not necessarily mean fewer opportunities for younger workers. Rather, employers will begin concentrating on finding qualified workers with the experience, attitude and education to get the job done, says Herman. "Age will become irrelevant. Young people are going to have more opportunities to pursue a number of different career directions, and they will do so on a continuing basis," he suggests.

Insuring a comfortable retirement will be a strong motivator for entrepreneurs.

Economically, this new concept of retirement could have dramatic impacts on spending patterns, but it is difficult to predict just what they might be.

Some economists paint a rosy picture should the economy sustain a decade of reasonable growth early in the next century, when the leading edge of the baby boom turns 65.

One final factor that cannot be discounted is the resourcefulness and ingenuity of retirees themselves. The motivation to find a way to have a comfortable retirement is a very strong one, and the baby boomers are the most educated generation in the history of the world. Many are likely to find ingenious ways to prosper in their later years, and one popular way will be business ownership.