Baby boomers have triggered social change at each stage in their lives - from expanding school rolls to inventing the yuppie. Now, they're reaching a milestone that has some experts worried.

The first boomers turn 59-1/2 this year. That's old enough to pull money out of Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) without tax penalty. And while no one expects a huge drawdown immediately, some financial analysts are concerned about what boomer retirement will do to the stock market.

Call it the cash-in crisis of the early 21st century. If the nation's 80 million boomers fund their golden years by pulling their trillions of dollars out of stocks and bonds, markets could tumble, some experts say. Others counter that the threat is overblown because markets are far too complex to judge using generational shifts alone.

This debate is heating up as boomer retirements loom. In just three more years, the first boomers will be eligible for early Social Security payments. Three years after that, they'll reach the classic retirement age of 65.

"There's a lot of evidence that people do take Social Security benefits at age 62 when they're first eligible" and leave the workforce, says John Gist, associate director of the Public Policy Institute at AARP, a seniors' lobby. There's also a strong tendency for people to take lump-sum distributions from IRAs and pension plans, he says, "and there's a danger that they'll spend a lot of it and won't have enough left for their retirement needs."

The big question is: Will boomers act any differently when they reach 62?

The generation is closely watched because of its outsize impact. It's 50 percent larger than the previous generation and one-seventh bigger than the following one. By 2030, when all boomers will have reached retirement age, the share of Americans over 65 is predicted to jump from 17 percent in 2000 to 27 percent.

That spells demographic trouble, according to some analysts. In their view, the stock market boomed in the 1990s because that was the period when many boomers moved into their peak years of earning and stashed away money for retirement.

Over the next four years, boomer demographics will continue to help fuel the stock market, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a record high of about 36,000, forecasts Harry Dent Jr., an author and futurist. Then, he says, the market will collapse backward into a depression until the boomers' children hit their own peak earning years a decade or more later.

Even a much less dramatic scenario could nonetheless have big effects. Since the 1920s, stocks have returned each year an average 6 percent above bond yields, notes John Geanakoplos, director of the Cowles Foundation at Yale University. But because of boomers retiring, average stock returns for the next 15 years or so will be weak, he predicts, maybe only 2 percent a year above the yield on bonds.

Despite these arguments, many economists remain skeptical that demographics tell the whole story.

"Markets are more robust than that," says Leonard Burman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. "If baby boomers decide to shift out of stocks and into bonds, then bondholders will shift into stocks" because stocks would be undervalued, he says. In addition, "we've got a huge number of international investors, and they're not affected by the same factors as domestic saving and investment. I don't see there being a very large effect."

Such demographic changes also will probably trigger other forces that could mitigate the overall effect, other analysts say. For example, lower returns on market investments could push baby boomers to retire later, which would reduce the amount of money siphoned out of the market in any one year.

Interestingly, surveys show that most boomers already expect - and often desire - to continue working past 65. When financial planner Richard Erwin talked with baby boomers 10 years ago, a lot of them mentioned early retirement. Not any more. "They say, 'I might have to work until I'm 70,' " says Mr. Erwin, president of Investors Asset Management in Plano, Texas.

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