The deepest downturn in the U.S. economy since the Great Depression may finally shrink the gap between the very best-off Americans and everyone else.

If so, it won't be by lifting up the bottom. It will be by pulling down the top.

Over the past 30 years, chief executives, Wall Street bankers and traders, law-firm partners and such amassed ever-greater incomes, while the incomes of factory workers, teachers, office managers and others in the middle grew much more slowly. In 2007, the top 1% of U.S. families accounted for 23.5% of all personal income in the U.S., according to economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics. That was a level not seen since the Roaring Twenties.

The top 1%'s share appears to be falling fast. Mr. Saez and other economists expect income going to the top 1% of taxpayers — currently, those with about $400,000 a year — will drop to somewhere between 15% and 19% of all income by 2010. That still would leave income distribution more top-heavy in the U.S. than in many other countries.

One early indication: Median chief-executive pay at companies in the S&P 500 fell 15% in 2008 (to $7.3 million), according to University of Southern California pay expert Kevin Murphy.

"Based on past experience, it looks like inequality will go down and change the long-term trend of America

On the surface, the future looks bleak for baby boomers. The Center for Economic and Policy Research projects that the median baby boomer household lost 45 percent of its net worth between 2004 and 2009. So why does retirement expert Ken Dychtwald think that boomers' retirement will still have a high quality of life? Dychtwald is a psychologist and the author of 16 books on aging, including his latest, With Purpose: Going From Success to Significance in Work and Life. He argues that retirement for this generation will be so different from traditional retirement that maybe we'll need a new word to describe it.

Perhaps the big reason retirement is changing is that life spans are changing. Increases in obesity and heart disease have not gotten in the way of continual increases in life expectancy over the past 100 years. In 1950, when many of the baby boomers were born, the average 65-year-old was expected to live an additional 13.9 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In 2006, a 65-year-old was expected to live 18.5 years longer. Dychtwald says this doesn't mean our health is improving; it's more a shift in attitude. "When our moms and dads reached their 65th or 70th birthday, they felt like they were in the ninth inning, and they were quite happy. Now, boomers look around and see 80-year-old newlyweds and 90-year-old marathon runners," he says.

Many boomers will retire later than their parents did. To some, the delay might seem like a sign of declining living standards. Retiring early has long been a mark of success. "Now we're seeing a lot of questioning of whether 20 years of nonproductive leisure is affordable or even enjoyable. Somewhere between 60 and 65 percent of retirees don't like it at all," he says, arguing that we may see a period of semiretirement for