If you think the recession is bad news read on...

So once the recession is over we will be OK? Right? Wrong according to the IMF. They are claiming that once the recession passes, countries will need to work on closing their gaping fiscal deficits without triggering further collapses in output. They will also need to service bloated national debts. The International Monetary Fund estimates that among the Group of 20 nations whose leaders meet in London this week, the industrialised members will have increased their national debts by an average equivalent to nearly 25 per cent of gross domestic product between 2007 and 2014.

That is a heavy burden. But, to 2050, the cost of this crisis will be no more than 5 per cent of the financial impact they face from the ageing of their citizenry. As the IMF says, “in spite of the large fiscal costs of the crisis, the major threat to long-term fiscal solvency is still represented, at least in advanced countries, by unfavourable demographic trends”.

In the UK, for example, the government expects the extra annual costs imposed by ageing to reach 1.6 per cent of GDP by 2017-18. That is an increase in spending equivalent to the cost of servicing a rise in the national debt burden of about 37 per cent of GDP, according to FT calculations. That outstrips the 29 percentage point rise that the financial crisis and economic downturn are expected to inflict.
The picture by the way is what in my presentations I like to call the Baby boomer tsunami. It is clear that this is coming yet it is so often ignored. The best we can do therefore is to keep as many boomers in paid work for as long as possible. Does our Government ever read these reports!

Ageing Tweeters

Well - after my disparaging remarks about Twitter earlier I now discover that in the US it is the 45-54 year olds who are using it the most. Reuters reporter Alexei Oreskovic recently authored an interesting blog post about the demographics of Twitter users. What he discovered was that 18-24 year olds, the traditional social media early adopters, are actually 12 percent less likely than average to visit Twitter. It is the 25-54 year old crowd that is actually driving this trend. More specifically, 45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group, followed by 25-34 year olds, who are 30 percent more likely.

So maybe when I get my next book to the publisher at the end of April I will ask my much younger co-author to teach me how it works. She tweets regularly!

The Rainbow Years

Our publisher contacted us the other day to let us know that there has been a spate of reviews of our book on Amazon.co.uk. If you want to have a look just click on the picture of the book on the revolving widget. This will take you straight through to the page and just scroll down.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed a review.

The Death of Retirement

This is the title of a new report from Standard Life that provides even more evidence to back up the central themes of The Rainbow Years. One in three 46-to- 65 year olds want to keep working in new jobs – “on their own terms” – after the official retirement age. The same proportion will learn a new skill. VSO, the overseas development charity, recruits ten times more people aged over 50 than twenty years ago.

According to the Standard Life research, one in twenty would like to start a new business when they retire from their current full-time job. That amounts to one million new businesses. To give that context, there are only two million businesses registered in the UK today.
Honey Langcaster-James writes " The very word ‘retirement’ - coming as it does from the French ‘retirer’ literally means ‘to draw back’. This carries negative connotations as people are expected to opt out of life once they are no longer ‘useful’. This is no longer true. Increasing life
expectancy and prosperity means we will now spend close to a third of our life post 65. We will be healthier, wealthier and, for the first time, have the genuine freedom to define our own identity and direction, without being shackled by the need to ‘fit in’ or ‘tow the line’. This is the ‘third age’, an age of choice and freedom to do what you want, go where you want and be who you want to be".

And she probably hasn't even read The Rainbow Years!

Raising grandchildren in a recession

A fascinating article today in the Wall Street Journal, “‘Grandfamilies’ Come Under Pressure” discusses the recession poses unique problems for people raising their grandchildren.

Some six million kids, representing about 8 percent of American children, live with their grandparents, according to the U.S. Census bureau.

"Today, more and more children are being raised by their grandparents. These grandparents provide a crucial safety net, allowing children whose parents can’t provide for them to remain in families, instead of winding up as wards of the state. But as the recession hits “grandfamilies,” that safety net is under stress. The unemployment rate for older workers is lower than the overall rate. But once they become unemployed, older workers find it harder to land a job and they tend to remain out of work longer than younger workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for those 55 and over has been climbing significantly in recent months; in March, it rose to 6.2 percent — the highest it has been since September, 1949, according the bureau….

Many older workers who lose their jobs drop out of the work force, believing their efforts are hopeless. The number of people 55 and older classified by the federal government as “discouraged” — meaning they’ve given up looking for work because they don’t think there are any jobs for them — nearly tripled from December 2007 to December 2008, to 154,000 from 53,000, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute."

The medical literature is mixed on the health effects of raising grandchildren. Some studies show that raising your grandchildren takes a toll on your health. Not only is the job physically tiring, but grandparents who are raising young children often suffer from less sleep and exposure to childhood colds and have less time to take care of themselves. At the same time, some grandparents enjoy raising their grandchildren and believe it makes them more active and connected.

We have posted before on the huge contribution that grandparents make to their families and to our economy in the UK and this is often not given appropriate recognition and can even have negative tax and pension implications for this caring group.

Study proves that older adults are mentally tough

A study published today in the Medical Journal of Australia shows a link between physical and mental decline in older adults.

The study found that rates of depression in older Australian adults are not as high as previous research studies have indicated.

"Depression amongst older adults is the exception not the rule in older adults," said Dr Jon Pfaff, the study's lead author, based at the Western Australian Centre for Health and Ageing.

Professor Osvaldo Almeida, Director of Research at the Western Australian Centre for Health and Ageing, said the results were very exciting for two reasons.

"We were able to confirm that poor physical health has a significant impact on mental wellbeing and, more importantly, we showed that older people are mentally very resilient, as only significant physical disability seems to undermine good mental health," Professor Almeida said.

"It is as if the mind does not suffer the effects of ageing in the same way that the body does; our minds remain young until very late in life."

Previous studies have shown that this age group responds well to treatment.

So yet again more evidence of the importance of staying physically fit. As we are keep reporting you are never too old to start a fitness programme.

It pays to talk..

Some new research carried out by BT shows that half of over-50s do not tell their children about the physical things they can no longer do for themselves.It also shows more than a third (37%) of people under 50 find it difficult to talk to their parents and in-laws about the fact they are getting older.

The findings came from an ICM survey of 2,000 UK adults carried out from March 4-8.

The poll also found more than two thirds (69%) of adults under 50 in the UK are concerned about caring for their parents or in-laws as they get older, while 77% of over 50s are concerned about being a burden on their children.

Despite an apparent reluctance to talk about getting older, 80% of people over 50 expect to rely on the telephone to make sure they can keep in touch with family and friends as their mobility decreases. Well this is a BT survey so you might expect that but even so it does seem a pity that so many of us have difficulties in discussing these issues within our families. Come on - let us trust ourselves and our families and talk more openly.

IOD now supports abolition of the default state retirement age

Its not always attractive to keep looking at older posts and because of this I want to highlight a comment that has been posted today by Malcolm Small from the IOD. We had a conversation today about the IOD position and Malcolm informed me that he is now writing a new policy paper to be launched in the autumn on this and related issues. To save you the trouble I am reproducing his comment below. "Well, you don't need to persuade the IoD, at least, any more. I'm writing a policy paper for launch in the Autumn - the Roadmap for Retirement Reform 2009 - which will look positively at how older workers can add real value in business. The impossibility of funding a 30 year retirement from a 35 year working life means continued employment is a vital, legitimate, strategy for the "baby boom" generation. There's no doubt we will see a lot more elder workers, at all levels, in future - and elder entrepreneurs, too." Thank you to the IOD for having the courage to change their views so publically.

The pluses (and negatives) of being 50-plus

This was the very positive email that I received this morning from Dick Stroud who runs 50 + Marketing and has an excellent book out on that subject.

Back in February I was sent a copy of The Rainbow Years: The Pluses of Being 50+, a book by Barrie Hopson and Mike Scally.

We are now into April and the book remains unread. Pressure of work and all of that stuff...

Last weekend I had an old friend staying who started to read the book and kept reading. If it had this effect on Robert then it must be doing a lot of things right since he is the sort of guy who gives short shrift to waffle and psychobabble.

As he departed I thrust the book in his hand and asked him to write a short review - this is what he said.

Written largely in the format of a workbook, it follows a path of individual life review and assessment - a personal SWOT analysis, supported with helpful articles and anecdotes to encourage clear and informed future life decision making for those traditionally approaching retirement.

However, as one actually in the target age group, there is much to be commended in this extension to the Rainbow theme. Firstly there is the purely practical discipline of the section by section approach. After all, few of us really plan beyond the immediate arrival of an event, and many stop full time work honestly admitting that they really don’t know what they are going to do.

Preparation provided by employers in the past is increasingly rare, and with job continuity so much less secure than it was, opportunity for detailed planning is limited and unguided. Consequently whilst I can see the described process forming a framework for seminars and group approaches, the Rainbow workbook is more likely to come into its own as a personal tool for those aware that they should be planning for change, but lacking support as to structure.

The authors however, go beyond the pure retirement consideration. It references directly the massive change in prospective longevity combined with improved health. It focuses the mind on the range of alternatives other than moving from work to retirement in one fell swoop. Discussion identifies the wealth potential in over 50`s, yet is sufficiently up to date to note the life inconsistencies between capital wealth and pension income over a possible non working period of 40 or 50 years.

The authors suggest a future “norm” of a “mixed activity” which could contain traditional or charitable work, pure recreation, physical and mental stimuli, continued over many years.

The essential difference which they highlight in this “third age” is the matter of choice. Never before has a generation been so placed as to be able to decide their later life balance, or to have so long to regret a lack of planning. No longer driven by necessity to absolute ambition and earnings to the detriment of other things, but aware that only so much golf or so many holidays are possible before frustration kicks in, the new over 50`s may have the same opportunity to shape their future as they had at 20, largely without the same fear and pressure, but potentially with the same anticipation and satisfaction.

To be recommended to anyone over 50 needing to reshape their future, to any prospective retiree stumbling myopically into the future, and even to those already retired, but honest enough to admit that they are not enjoying life as they might have hoped!

Clearly the book worked for Robert. If you are interested in the 50-plus market then the book provides you with insights into the options, decisions and the range of emotions swelling around in the heads of your target customers. Sounds like a good buy to me. Dick Stroud

Keep on dancing

You may recall that I was in raptures a couple of weeks ago about the over 50's chorus girls and boys in the Palm Springs Follies. Well, there is now new evidence that suggests that older people can dance their way towards improved health and happiness, according to a report from the Changing Ageing Partnership (CAP).

The research, by Dr Jonathan Skinner from Queen's University Belfast, reveals the social, mental and physical benefits of social dancing for older people. It suggests that dancing staves off illness, and even counteracts the ageing process.

Recommendations include the expansion of social dance provision for older people in order to aid successful ageing and help older people enjoy longer and healthier lives.

Jonathan Skinner, Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the School of History and Anthropology at Queen's, studied the effects of social dancing amongst older people in Northern Ireland, Blackpool and Sacramento, USA.

Dr Skinner said: 'I have found that social dancing leads to a continued engagement with life - past, present, and future - and holds the promise for successful ageing. It contributes to the longevity of the dancers, giving them something to enjoy and focus upon - to live for. It alleviates social isolation and quite literally helps take away the aches and pains associated with older age.'

So - a bit of 'Strictly' for us all.