Phillip Longman

He is the author of numerous articles and books on demographics, economics, finance, health care, and social change. His work has appeared in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, Der Spiegel, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, The New Republic, The New Statesman, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Monthly, and Washington Post.

His latest book, co-authored with Ray Boshara, is entitled The Next Progressive Era: A Blueprint for Broad Prosperity (Polipoint, Spring 2009). Even before its publication, Mr. Longman has been asked to testify before Congress on its proposals for revamping America’s transportation system, which he also explained recently in a National Public Radio interview broadcast nationwide. The book’s proposals for reviving small-scale banking were also highlighted in a recent broadcast of Dan Rather Reports.

Mr. Longman’s previous book Best Care Anywhere, published by Polipoint in 2007, chronicles the quality transformation of the Veterans Health Administration and applies its lessons to a plan for reforming the U.S. health care system as a whole. Mr. Longman has lectured widely on this subject, including appearance at the Wharton School of Business, Yale School of Management, WorldVistA, MedImpact, and at numerous VA facilities around the country.

His other books include The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity And What to Do About It, published by Basic Books in 2004 and reissued in paperback in 2006. It examines how the rapid yet uneven fall in birth rates around the globe is affecting the balance of power between nations and influencing the global economy and culture. Mr. Longman’s speaking on this subject include appearances in the documentary, “Demographic Winter” and addresses to PopTech, National War College, the LongNow Foundation, World Congress of Families (Warsaw), Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce (Ottawa), and (forthcoming) The St. Gallen Symposium (Switzerland) and the Ford Hall Forum (Boston).

Mr. Longman is also the author of Born to Pay: the New Politics of Aging in America (Houghton Mifflin, 1987), in which he accurately predicted the mounting strains on federal spending and economic growth associated with the aging of the Baby Boom generation. In 1997, he warned of the consequences excess debt and insufficient savings in his book, The Return of Thrift: How the Collapse of the Middle Class Welfare State Will Reawaken Values in America (Free Press, 1997).

Formerly a senior writer and deputy assistant managing editor at U.S. News & World Report, he has won numerous awards for his business and financial writing, including UCLA's Gerald Loeb Award, and the top prize for investigative journalism from Investigative Reporters and Editors. He is a graduate of Oberlin College, and was also a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University.