Bradley Schurman
Bradley is an expert on demographic change and how it disrupts social, cultural, political, and economic norms across the United States and around the world. He’s the author of THE SUPER AGE: DECODING OUR DEMOGRAPHIC DESTINY and the founder and CEO of the global research and advisory firm, The Super Age.
Mr Schurman, in your book „THE SUPERAGE” you use the term “eldernomics”. What does it stand for?
Eldernomics is a term that my friend and colleague Ramsey Alwin used as her Twitter handle at AARP before becoming the President and CEO of the National Council on Aging. I have always considered it as a way to express a pragmatic and inclusive approach to ensuring that older people had access to economic opportunity, as well as a hand in growing the economic prosperity of our societies.
The participation of older people in the social and economic health and wellbeing of our nations is more important now than at any time since the end of the Second World War, and will only continue to grow in the Super Age, which is a novel period of decreasing birth rates and increased longevity where at least one out of five people will be over the age of 65.
You also write quote “All people want to belong and to be seen as normal”. Regarding that Statement, how useful or maybe harmful is the sill common approach of “xplus” most likely the 50plus or 65plus as definition for a market segment?
Age-based segmentation, like 50+ or 65+, likely had a place in a world where individuals experienced roughly the same life course, which was a reality for most of human history. Before the Second Industrial Revolution, which occurred from 1870 and 1914, about half the population followed a generally prescribed path where they experienced childhood, adulthood, and old age. The other half died before they reached adulthood.
Young people who survived childhood would become adults, at least in the eyes of society, around the age of 14; some type of religious ceremony would typically mark this change. Shortly after these became adults, they would likely marry and have their own children. Since there was no formal retirement system, most people would work until they could no longer. Old was a term that was generally reserved for people in decline, especially those that could no longer work or care for themselves.
Advances in science, technology, and social welfare, which occurred during the latter part of the Second Industrial Revolution, paved the way for improved survival rates of children into adulthood and changed the way in which individuals experience life. Following the advent of child labor laws, as well as universal childhood education and old-age pensions, the life stages of adolescence and retirement became part of the prescribed path.
Those that are higher income began to alter the life course by marrying and having children later, or refusing to do either at all. Today, about half of people under 50 are not married and the fastest growing group of new parents are in their 40s. This is creating an extended adolescence and middle age for some people. The middle-plus, as I like to call the latter, is a real sweet spot for businesses, because these people tend to be engaged in income-generating work, physically healthy and interested in their well-being, culturally connected, and digitally savvy.
In my book, The Super Age: Decoding our Demographic Destiny, I warn against the folly of lumping everyone over 50 into the “longevity economy,” because I would no sooner segment a 50-year-old with a centenarian, as I would with a newborn baby. Stage-based segmentation, which has been core to my consulting business practice for years, is the only way to go.
If grouping people by their age makes less sense, what is/are meaningful description(s) for need based segments of our population?
Stage-based segmentation, where a number of different variables are considered, are far more valuable for companies, especially as they grapple with this new era of the Super Age where, in just a few years, there will be more people over the age of 65 than under 18.
The best things to look at are social and economic factors that give a more robust picture of groups of people. Here are a few that I consider very important:
- Health status (i.e. physical, mental, cognitive), as well as number and type of chronic conditions
- Work status (i.e. full-time, part-time, volunteer, retired)
- Activities of daily living (i.e. fundamental skills required to independently care for oneself, such as eating, bathing, and mobility)
- Home ownership
- Car ownership
- Caregiving status (e.g. taking care of spouse, parents)
- Income level
- Parenthood
In your book, you headline a section “The cost of doing nothing”. What cost do you describe here?
During the 20th Century, society leaned-into this idea that older people were disposable workforce assets, and that retirement should be something that we all aspire to. This was likely due to generous pension systems that were developed decades before, as well as an explosion of young and affordable workers due to the baby boom.
Businesses began retiring older workers en masse, which meant that the labor force participation rate for those over 65 went from nearly 50% in the 1950s to 14% by the 1990s. It is recovered somewhat since then, but today there are only one out of five people over the age of 65 working in the formal labor market.
This would not be a problem if there was a large proportion of younger people at work and a small number of older people in retirement. However, that is not the case. In the past decade in the U.S. alone, the over 65s have grown by around 25%, while those 18-25 have contracted by about 10%. Since the mid-century, the over 65 has grown by more than 100%.
Too many retired people create undue stress on the economy, not only does it disrupt public pensions, but it also negatively impacts health systems, since people who are out of work report declines in physical, mental, and cognitive health. Large numbers of retirees also have the added effect of creating a drag on the overall economy, since a significant amount of tax-revenue is lost due to their lack of participation that funds these programs. Essentially, there are too few people at work to pay for too many people out of work.
The number of people in retirement and on fixed incomes also removes potential customers from businesses who are looking to grow. People on "fixed incomes" are less likely to have disposable income to spend on discretionary items. Again, this would not be an issue if there was substantial population growth, but the U.S. has been experiencing birth rate decline for decades; Generation Z is smaller than millennials, and Generation Alpha is on-track to be smaller than Generation Z.
If we do nothing, the social welfare systems that were created over the course of the past century or so, will likely collapse. We can anticipate that economic growth will slow too, which could lead to a period of pseudo-stagflation, which could include persistent high inflation combined with stagnant demand.
What is the most overlooked chance in our aging world, what is the sweetspot in the superage?
I believe that the sweetest spot in the economy now is the “middle-plus.” This is an emerging life stage between traditional middle age, which is 45-65, and retirement, which is 65+. There is not an age bracket for this group, per se, but they do trend older, are economically active both as workers and consumers, have some degree of wealth, are intimately connected to their health and wellbeing, and are digitally literate. To me, they are “super-agers” and they are completely remaking the consumer landscape. Businesses should take note.
Because of this new emerging life stage, as well as declining birth rates and explosion of the older populations, businesses need to build age- and generationally-inclusive segmentation models, business practices, products and services, and marketing and communications strategies. They can start by learning from big companies, like Apple and BMW, that are already leveraging the demographics of the Super Age in their favor.