Boomers
Eternal Youths: How the Baby Boomers are Having Their Time Again
A Conversation with Julia Huber of Demos / News Release
September 30, 2004
AARP Global Aging Program Idea Exchange Series
Washington, D.C.
Julia Huber of Demos, an independent social policy think tank in the UK, spoke to AARP’s Global Aging Program Idea Exchange on Thursday, September 30 on her newest book, Eternal Youths: How the Baby Boomers are Having Their Time Again.
Ms. Huber spoke about the background of Demos’s aging society program and explained that for the last eighteen months they’ve engaged in work exploring what they see as an often overlooked aspect of the aging society debate: The fact that it is not just the numbers of old people that are going to be different over the coming decades, but the values and attitudes of that older generation.
That interest led Demos to focus in particular on the characteristics of the baby boom generation in the UK. Demos published their first report on the ‘new old’, looking at the next generation of older people, the baby boomers, and how their distinct attitudes and values will transform the meaning of ‘old age’. The ‘new old’ was intended as an agenda-setting report outlining a broad set of opportunities and challenges that the aging of the baby boomer generation will present to our society.
Following the first report, according to Ms. Huber, Demos was interested in exploring some of the issues raised in the initial research in more detail. Demos also wanted to "plug the gap" that they had discovered around the original research on the attitudes and values of UK boomers. As a result, last January Demos started to examine boomers’ demands and expectations from services in later life.
Ms. Huber explained that through a series of expert interviews as well as focus groups with UK baby boomers from diverse backgrounds, Demos determined how boomers themselves felt about a whole range of issues and what they wanted from service providers in the future. Ms. Huber and her team at Demos then used several case studies of existing innovative service provision for older people to illustrate how the demands of an aging baby boomer generation might be met by organisations from all sectors.
Ms. Huber shared some of the key findings from her research at Demos. UK baby boomers have the wealth, health and spare time to 'live life again'. At the moment, many UK boomers are beginning to enjoy a windfall; the combination of wealth, good health and more and more spare time gives them a new phase of life in middle age that is set to continue into their older years. Increasingly free from the pressures of overwork and childrearing baby boomers have the chance to 'live life again' and satisfy their desire for personal fulfilment.
For those who can afford it, according to Ms. Huber, a new 'experience economy' of travel, food, learning and lifestyle is growing rapidly. Baby boomers used to working full time or meeting various care responsibilities are preoccupied with re-establishing control over their own time and creating the flexibility to enjoy themselves. They are hungrily searching out new experiences.
Now and into later life, baby boomers will be increasingly looking to support and service organisations for help. The boomers in focus groups strongly defended the principles of welfare and free healthcare in the UK, and wanted guarantees of support and security. But increasingly, explained Ms. Huber, they see these fixed points, including retirement income and assets, as a bulwark against which they can experiment with more flexible ways of living. She said that baby boomers appear to prefer a cyclical approach to retirement, dipping in and out of periods of leisure, education and work. They will be increasingly interested in new forms of part-time work and income if they feel that they can maintain them on their own terms. They are likely to rebel if they feel they are being manipulated or having the rules changed.
Secondly, boomers are increasingly colonising youth and popular culture. As a generation, UK baby boomers are already rejecting many of the traditional assumptions society makes about older age. Many of the boomers Ms. Huber and Demos spoke to felt that old age didn’t begin until 80, a full 15 years after the UK state pension age. And by making personal fulfilment in mid-and later life their priority, many boomers are and will continue to use their purchasing power and self-awareness to dominate the images and rituals of popular culture.
Finally, baby boomers are keen to maintain their independence into older age and want to exercise choice over how and when to end their life. From middle-aged men and women on motorbikes to new beauty products and treatments and music retailing, the dominance of baby boomers and their own formative icons will continue to grow, according to Huber.
Although the media and marketing industries are often criticised for their obsession with youth, it is less well understood that baby boomers have and will continue to have little trouble in reaching for aspects of youth culture which appeal to them. As a result, in the future it may become increasingly difficult to find cultures and social movements that are distinctively "young."
The fact that UK boomers are not prepared to be sent out to pasture and are keen to enjoy life to the fullest in their later years should be welcomed as a positive indication of the increasing wealth, health and assertiveness of the next generation of older people. However, the majority of our institutions and organisations are not yet ready to meet the demands and expectations of the aging boomer cohort. According to Ms. Huber, society needs to start thinking now about how it can provide boomers with the flexibility and choice that they will want in older age, whether this is in terms of their leisure activities, working during retirement, care and support services, or manner of death.
The case studies Ms. Huber highlighted during her presentation were of innovative service providers from different sectors that illustrate how organisations might meet the expectations of the increasingly demanding UK boomers.
- In the last decade a number of different considerations have
catapulted B&Q, a do it yourself (DIY) and gardening
tool retailer in the UK, to the role of standard-bearer in
accommodating the needs of older people.
B&Q does not have a staff retirement age and is well-known for employing older people – including at the moment, one employee in his early 90s and several in their 80s. The company offers flexible and part-time work opportunities, which are attractive to retirees. One of the reasons for the commercial success of this initiative is that older employees tend to have previous DIY experience and, as a result, are able to provide useful advice to customers.
Moreover, all B&Q stores have a disability access and for several years now the company has stocked a range of inclusively designed DIY and gardening tools. - The Senior Wellness Project is an initiative offered by Senior Services, a non-profit organisation in the Seattle and King County area (USA). The project aims to get older people, with chronic health conditions, actively involved in their own healthcare through accessible and low-cost health promotion programs including exercise and educational classes. The project has proven extremely successful and has worked with over 3000 people in the area.
- OXO International is a household and gardening tool producer based in the US. All OXO products are based on the principles of inclusive design. In other words, they are tools which aim to be easily usable for the widest range of people by taking into account, during the design process, as many potential needs and dexterity problems that a user might have. This also means including potential users in the design process from a very early stage.
- Sustainable Trynwalden is based in the rural area of Trynwalden in the Netherlands. Trynwalden has torn down all residential and nursing homes for older people; Sustainable Trynwalden is now providing all care and social services for older people in the area either directly at people’s homes or in a central service centre. Care and social service standards and older people’s quality of life have improved significantly at almost no additional cost.
Improved service provisions and increased flexibility and choice are not sufficient to meet the challenges of an aging UK boomer population, according to Ms. Huber. Society also needs to remember that the boomers’ confidence is overshadowed by their fear of the natural aging and especially the increasing dependence and frailty that can accompany it. If baby boomers are to fully enjoy older age, they need to become more accepting of the process of growing old. We can contribute to this by working towards a society with more positive cultural and social attitudes towards aging - one which values older people and the contributions they can make.