Even though I was raised in the U.S., I find the American approach to the elderly a bit bizarre. My family is from Bangladesh. My grandparents moved in with their children when they were too old to take care of themselves. Yet here in the U.S., the popular culture strongly pushes back against multi-generational living. So we end up with a fairly bizarre situation: a country that is in crisis about how to take care of retirees, and also faces the challenge of middle class couples not wanting to have children because of, among other things, the enormous costs of child care. I feel like one problem is a built in solution to the other problem.
I'm not trying to criticize anyone's lifestyle choices. But to an extent our lifestyle choices are cultural. See, e.g., the cultural attitudes about young people living with their parents into their 20's in places like Spain versus the U.S. I think one thing the economy and the retirement crisis will force is a changing attitude towards multi-generational living. We're facing a future with fewer workers per retiree. At this instant it's a zero-sum game: we either tax working people more so the elderly can maintain independent lifestyles, or we reduce benefits to older people and force them to depend more on their children. Either way, the efficiencies that are inherent in multi-generational living will be an attractive way to deal with the smaller than expected pie that must be split amongst more people.