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When the opening line of a panel discussion on aging and the longevity economy is something like this: “Every single person in this room over 25 suffers from a disease, and that disease is the disease of aging,” those of us steeped in this field take notice. To begin, suggesting that the human condition of living is considered a disease is a bit provocative, if not ignorant. In addition, the moderator of said panel followed the introduction with, “eventually the disease of aging is going to kill us,” which I assume at this point was meant to be merely bombastic, especially since the panelists were thoughtful, engaging humans, all of whom were clearly living with this aging “disease.”

Convened by the Milken Institute, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit think tank, the purpose of the panel was to discuss aging and longevity and the impact these two issues will have on the global economy. The discussion included a diverse array of people who have either studied aging and longevity or have dabbled in it due to their work.

Among the most interesting of perspectives came from Chip Conley, strategic advisor for hospitality and leadership at Airbnb, where adults 50 years and older make up only about 6 percent of its employees, compared to 25 percent in the entire U.S. workforce.

Despite the depressingly small number of elders in the company, Conley, who joined Airbnb at the age of 52, believes that older workers and younger workers have much to gain from each other. “I have had the experience of being both a mentor and an intern at the same time,” he said, also noting that while the average age of company leaders is declining, “meaning power is moving younger, and these people who are getting a lot of power don’t have a lot of training, nor do they have a lot of people with gray hair around to give them advice.”

In an effort to address Airbnb’s workforce problem, Conley pointed to the “wise elder” who can help with “emotional intelligence and good thinking around strategy, and will not be a competitor to his younger colleague, who uses him as a sounding board.” One of the company’s solutions is to create an affinity group of employees 50 and older who can address the issues and have their voices heard. “Elders have proven to be helpful in creating better teams, better at helping them operate, and better at creating collegial and collaborative environments where teams works better,” he said.

Presented with a question about what products and services are being developed to cater to the genuine needs of elders, Joseph Coughlin, PhD, director of the MIT AgeLab, asserted that it’s not just about the needs of older adults, “because, as the saying goes in the auto industry, everyone knows that a young man will never buy an old man’s car and an older man or an older woman will run away from it as well.”

The idea, he says, is to create products that excite and delight. “The reason why older adults aren’t buying products that are made for older adults is not because [the consumers] are old and declining, it’s because we have yet to invent a longevity product that is worth buying,” he said. Others may disagree with this last statement, but I agree with his premise that there needs to be more products focused on exciting and delighting older consumers.

Circling back to Airbnb, Conley noted that there is a growing number of “digital nomads” who recognize that they can mix their work and their pleasure because they are armed with a mobile device, a laptop, and wifi connections. They live in Airbnbs and they travel the world while working, he says. What’s more, the fastest-growing group of Aribnb hosts is adults 50 years and older. The reason behind this is because many people who are over 50 own their own home, are empty nesters, have extra rooms in their homes, and want to add to their retirement income. Airbnb hosts also have the highest guest ratings.

These slices of information make me wonder if the folks over at Silvernest and others with similar home-share-for-Boomers business models have heard about this. Airbnb’s experience certainly seems to suggest that these housing alternatives are likely onto something.

The perspectives here were diverse and not the usual advice (others on the panel included a representative from AARP and the economist-author of “The 100-Year Life”). Watch the full discussion to get some newer perspectives on the longevity economy. It may stimulate some fresh thinking of your own.

If you want a focused approach to strategic decisions around navigating the longevity economy, facilitated by experts in the senior living field and candid feedback, contact Quantum Age today.

No company can ignore the imperative to innovate and failing to do so is an invitation to lose business. This is the introduction to a new report from PwC on—you guessed it—innovation.

Based on a survey of more than 1,200 executives in 44 countries, the report attempts to uncover a better understanding of how innovating companies are seeking to create business value and financial returns on their efforts. PwC’s survey asked questions about innovation strategy, operating models, culture, metrics, and more.

So what does this have to do with long-term/post-acute care and senior living? Well everything, of course. How’s that? Aging services providers know that they must innovate in order to succeed amid the impending wave of alternative payment models, stiff competition, and threats to Medicaid and Medicare funding.

Titled “Reinventing Innovation: Five Findings to Guide Strategy Through Execution,” the report is packed with juicy insights and stats. Here are some key findings:

1. Growing the Sandbox: The majority of the survey respondents are big believers in bringing more stakeholders into to the “innovation sandbox.” Among other things, PwC asserts that casting a wider net when it comes to getting input and generating ideas can improve innovation’s alignment with business strategy, help companies access fresh ideas and critical talent, and also enable them fail faster and get new innovations to market sooner. With this in mind, the report states, companies are opening up their innovation processes earlier to a broader set of stakeholders—from both inside and outside the company. In fact, the majority of companies surveyed said are bringing customers—as well as employees—into the innovation process at the ideation phase.

2. Reimagine and Experiment: Innovating without aligning it with strategy is not a prudent path for most companies, according to the report, which finds that for any initiative to deliver true value, it must clearly align with a company’s business strategy. The authors offered that example of GE Ventures, which, according to CEO Sue Siegel, means they must focus on reimagining and experimenting with new business models. “Emergent technologies are very powerful, but what we have to figure out is, what is the sustainable business model that we could potentially either partner up with or use within our organization to drive growth? We’ve been able to experiment to translate these major trends and technology enablers and apply them to business model innovation. That is incredibly important to how we stay ‘tip of spear’ at GE,” she said. That being said, the survey found that more than half of innovating companies struggle with bridging the gap between innovation strategy and business strategy, flagging it as their greatest strategic challenge when it comes to innovation.

3. The Right Stuff: Finding employees with the right human judgment and intuition in examining the data is “critical to obtaining useful insights for innovation,” the report suggests. “Soft skills like these are clearly valued by the executives we surveyed, who say their employees are their most important partners in innovation, ranking them above technology partners.” For example, Eddie Copeland, director of government innovation at Nesta, says that senior management’s failure to listen to frontline workers can be a major obstacle to innovation in government organizations. “Frontline employees often see problems and solutions more clearly than their cost-conscious managers,” she said. Also important to remember is that even if an employee doesn’t sit on a company’s core innovation team, they can still valuable contributors to innovation efforts early in the process. As Copeland explains in the report, they can function “as more than just personnel to whom innovations are pushed out for execution purposes.” Finally, don’t forget that employees are also consumers who can bring end-user insights into the innovation process. The survey found that 32 percent of the businesses surveyed said that finding employees with the right skills is their biggest people-related innovation challenge.

4. Technology Leads the Way: Companies continue to look to technology to help create markets for novel products and services that don’t yet exist, a la smartphones and wearables. Nearly one-third of those survey said their innovation is either all or mostly technology-led, while another one-third say they use a combination of technology and market-led innovation. Technology companies unsurprisingly are the leaders when it comes to “breakthrough innovation.” Nearly two-thirds of them make it a focus of most or all of their innovation efforts, according to the report. Maybe a little more surprising is that pharmaceutical and life sciences and health sciences companies follow technology in focusing mostly on breakthrough innovation.

PwC stresses that as companies invest more in innovation, they must strive to do a better job of aligning their innovation efforts with their business strategy. “Innovation spending ultimately has to drive business value and financial performance,” the report concludes. “But for that to happen in any consistent way, innovators should understand and help define future business models that can support the innovations they create.”

If you want a focused approach to your innovation strategies, facilitated by experts in the senior living field and candid feedback, contact Quantum Age today.

Cities—you either love ‘em or you hate ‘em. Whichever side you are on, there is no denying that urban areas in the United States and across the world are growing. Some expert futurists predict that by 2038, most urban areas will become megacities that will be “major political forces in countries due to their embrace of smart technologies to manage transportation, energy, and waste.”

Welltower Real Estate Investment Trust apparently has a similar prediction because they recently conducted a survey that examines what city dwellers think about retirement and aging issues and it’s pretty interesting. The survey, which was conducted in the spring, “among an audience of 3,000 adult participants across 10 cities” (Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Washington, D.C.), included Millennials, Generation Xers, and Baby Boomers.

Titled “Aging in Cities 2017 Report,” the study yielded some interesting data about how different age groups feel about aging, health care, and their financial preparedness for retirement. It also identifies, for those of us plugged into the longevity economy, some new opportunities with regard to people who want to age in cities and how their attitudes may impact urban living for the years ahead.

Herewith are some highlights from the report:

1. Health Care Services and Facilities for Aging in Cities

• This section of the report found that six out of 10 (61 percent) of city dwellers felt that having a good doctor is their highest health care priority as they age. Distance from health care facilities was less important, according to 21 percent of respondents.
• Nearly half (47 percent) of the respondents felt that there was a need for different options for aging at home, and 40 percent identified a need for more senior living communities within their cities. Not surprisingly, Baby Boomers were found to be most focused on senior housing options: 54 percent expressed the need for options to help aging citizens stay in their homes and 43 percent believed their cities were in need of more senior living communities.
• Sixty-six percent of the respondents expressed concern about dementia and one-third (34 percent) wanted more options for dementia care in their cities. Forty percent said say their city needed more mental health providers for older people and 33 percent cited the need for more memory care communities.
• Worth noting are the data around how dwellers of specific cities felt about health care services. In Chicago, for example, respondents wanted to focus on mental health providers and dementia care, while those in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco wanted more senior living communities and memory care facilities than the overall average.

2. Cost of Living and Financial Priorities

• Two-thirds (66 percent) of respondents said they believe they will have the financial means to live in the city at 80-plus, with 75 percent of Millennials and 58 percent of Baby Boomers reported believing they will have enough money to live in the location and place of their choosing when they are 80-plus. Toronto, San Francisco, Houston, Boston, and Seattle residents who were asked to think about their 80-plus year-old selves said that maintaining their current quality of life in the area they live now was the top financial priority. In New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, however, residents reported that lowering their cost of living and housing costs from what they pay now was their top priority for retirement yea
• This may not be surprising but serves as an underscore to what many longevity economy operatives know: The top five activities that respondents expect to give them purpose at 80-plus years of age are: pursuing a hobby, volunteering, exercising/group or individual sports, caregiving for family and friends in need, and engagement with their religion and place of worship. One in five respondents said that full- or part-time work, either in their current occupation or a new field, would give them purpose at that age.

3. Home Features for Aging in the Cities

• For 36 percent of the survey respondents, aging in place in their current home was the first choice when asked what they wanted in their 80-plus years. One-third said their preferred choice would be to move to an age-friendly home, either a smaller apartment designed with special features (18 percent) or a senior living community with full amenities and access to the city’s offerings (17 percent).

Welltower Executive Vice President Mercedes Kerr says in the afterword of the report that she hopes it will “spark new conversations to create positive change that benefits our senior population.” I couldn’t agree more. In addition, I hope the report will also illuminate the opportunities for innovation in aging services.

Contact us to learn how Quantum Age can help you leverage opportunities sparked by the longevity economy.

When The Economist covers your issue you know it must be a big one. It seems as though the rest of the world continues to catch onto the fact that there is a growing cohort of older adults around the globe, mainstream media is beginning to ponder the collateral issues and recognize that there are legit news stories to be told.

So it is that The Economist recently published a special report, the title of which is descriptive enough: The New Old. It examines many of the same issue that those of us in the longevity field have already deconstructed and analyzed several times over. However, it also sheds light on some of them from new angles, including a much more global perspective, which is refreshing.

The paper covers the future of work, finance, technology, and dating for older adults. It also posits that the “longer, healthier lives that people in the rich world now enjoy (and which in the medium term are in prospect in the developing world as well) can be a boon, not just for the individuals concerned but for the economies and societies they are part of.”

The key to unlocking this longevity dividend, the authors assert, is to “turn the over-65s into more active economic participants.” Herewith is a sampling of topics covered in the report:

Work: It’s no surprise that older workers are delaying retirement and staying in the workforce longer. The report examines the work ethic of baby boomers, their use of the gig economy, and their entrepreneurial spirit. As the authors note, people between 55 and 65 are now 65 percent more likely to start up companies than those between 20 and 34. In Britain, 40 percent of new founders are over 50, while almost 60 percent of those 70 years and older who are still working are self-employed. 

Finance: The longevity of our society means that retirement accounts, pension funds, and savings are at much higher risk of being depleted before its beneficiaries die. And in Europe, public pensions are still the main source of income for those over 65. What’s more, in both America and Britain public provision replaces around 40 percent of previous earnings, but in some European countries it can be 80 percent or more, the report says. “Where it makes up a big share of total pension income, as in Italy, Portugal, and Greece, a shrinking workforce will increasingly struggle to finance a bulging group of pensioners.” Defined benefit plans are much more popular today as a way to offset the bleeding private pension schemes. Given this new societal conundrum, the authors assert that the financial industry needs an overhaul. First, they suggest that it should “update the rigid three-stage life-cycle model on which most of its products are based.” Second, there needs to be a solution to the chronic under saving during working life and over saving during retirement. Third, the report suggests that a more creative approach is needed to the range of assets that pensioners can draw on. Making matters more complicated is the fact that the longer people live, the more varied their life cycle will become. “Workers will take breaks to look after children or go back to school; pensioners will take up a new job or start a business.” Financial providers need to recognize these changing needs and address them, the report advises. “That includes helping to fund technology that could vastly improve the final stage of life.” 

Technology: Tablets, remote sensor technology, smart homes, and more all hold promise for elders as the numbers grow. But funding mechanisms will be needed, especially for those less able to pay for the technology outright. The authors suggest that both the government and insurance companies may consider taking this on, especially since they have much to gain from prevention.

In conclusion, the report conjures up concerns about human longevity and suggests that if technologies, research, and new treatments keep up and are not soon addressed, “it could prove highly disruptive.” According to the authors, economies could suffer, social tensions could erupt and progress on gender equality might be reversed as many more women were obliged to become caregivers for elders. 

To avoid this dilemma, the authors say, societies and economies must start in earnest to prepare for those longer lives right now. No kidding.

If you want a focused approach to your strategic decisions, facilitated by experts in the senior living field and candid feedback, contact Quantum Age today.

A recent National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care (NIC) blog post caught my eye because it covers some important topics and research relevant to senior living providers and their prospective customers. Author Lana Peck outlined studies on Social Security, medical spending, and retirement and security. Specifically, the post covers how Social Security will impact the behavior and consumption patterns of seniors and health costs and their impact on retirement security.

One study that examined how Social Security benefits are affected by out-of-pocket medical spending found that the average retiree spends a substantial share of his or her Social Security income to health expenses. What’s more, premiums make up largest share of medical spending for most retirees. Not really a surprise, I know, but consider the following additional stats from the study:

• 75% is the average amount of social security benefit left for non-medical expenses for the average retiree.
• 30% of retirees’ household income is spent on housing, taxes, and non-housing debt.
• 10% of retirees (give or take) have less than one half of their OASI (Old Age Survivors Income) remaining for non-medical expenses.

Peck also noted that, in addition to these findings, Medicare beneficiaries also pay more out-of-pocket for health care as a share of household expenses than non-Medicare households, “and with health costs projected to rise more rapidly than Social Security income, these trends are likely to continue and worsen over time,” she said.

In another study, researchers determined the anticipated costs for “health shocks” (one or more of eight health conditions and three intensive health events) that they found specifically cause significant declines in net worth including stroke, cancer, lung disease, and health-related events such as hospital and nursing home stays, (including the loss of a spouse), and applied factors of net worth including home equity, other real estate, and business and financial holdings. Their findings:

• Someone at age 65 could expect a decline of between $30,000 and $90,000 in overall wealth depending on their gender and marital status due to health conditions.
• Some health shocks are more costly than others. Specifically, lung disease ($29,000), stroke ($25,000), nursing home care ($15,000), and spousal death ($30,000).
• The “wealth cost” of health shocks is about 9% of household net worth at age 65 for married individuals and for single men, but about 22% of net worth for single women.

Yet another study looks at issues around using homeownership as an investment that can be used in late life as income for health costs in retirement. This may be a sure safety net for current, older homeowners but for future cohorts, the ability to buy homes is fast becoming more and more elusive.

As the blog’s author puts it: “This research is especially important because of the aging population, increased life expectancy, and increasing health costs which shed light on the need for retirement planning that includes preparing for late life health shocks.”

I couldn’t have said it any better. This research is worth a deeper dive to get at the heart of the relationship between consumer health and financial trends to help inform your strategic decisions.

If you want a focused approach to your strategic decisions, facilitated by experts in the senior living field and candid feedback, contact Quantum Age today.

Confidence in the 55-plus housing market and continued spending growth among baby boomers in the remodeling industry are painting a rosy picture of the future of the longevity economy. But will builders, remodelers, and contractors create affordable and accessible housing that is appropriately designed?

Before we get to that, let’s examine the evidence. There are many factors contributing to this positive outlook, including two recent reports: One is the 55+ Housing Market Index (HMI), published by the National Association of Home Builders, and the other is the Demographic Change and the Remodeling Outlook report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The first report proclaims that builder confidence in the single-family 55-plus housing market was high for the second quarter of 2017. Builders registered a confidence level of “good versus poor” (above 50) for the 13^th consecutive quarter, according to a press release. What’s more, four indices that track production and demand of 55+ multifamily rentals posted gains in the second quarter: Present production rose three points to 53, expected future production climbed eight points to 52, current demand for existing units increased two points to 66, and expected future demand rose five points to 67.

Contributing to the strong demand, said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz, are “favorable market conditions, such as record highs in the stock market and rising home prices.”

Even more interesting than the builder/developer outlook is the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies report, which asserts that in addition to baby boomers leading home improvement spending for the past 20 years, “older homeowners will continue to dominate the remodeling market as they make investments to age in place safely and comfortably.”

Indeed—the residential remodeling market, which includes spending on improvements and repairs by both homeowners and rental property owners, reached an all-time high of $340 billion in 2015, surpassing the prior peak in 2007. And homeowners age 55 and over are expected to increase spending in remodeling by nearly 33 percent by 2025, the report predicts. Put another way, the share of market spending by this cohort is projected to reach 56 percent by 2025, up from only 31 percent in 2005.

While these projections and predictions are heartening, will fever for the longevity economy keep up with the need for affordability, access, and appropriate design? To that end, a QA blog post from last December outlines another Harvard report finding that only 1 percent of the current U.S. housing stock offers the five design elements that would allow older adults to live comfortably. Those design elements include the following: zero-step entrances, single-floor designs, wide halls and doorways, electrical controls reachable from a wheelchair, and lever-style handles on faucets and doors. The report also notes that “public investment and private sector efforts to expand access to affordable in-home supportive services will be critical going forward.”

There you have it. Let’s take some steps now to make housing accessible, affordable, and livable for older adults.

If you would like to take lead on housing access, design, and affordability for seniors and also raise your profile within the longevity economy, contact Quantum Age today.

FYI: most people who are now between 57 and 61 will experience short stays in skilled nursing facilities (SNFs). Yes, you read that correctly. According to new research from the RAND Corp., 56 percent of people within this age range will stay in a nursing home at least one night during their lifetime.

Why this isn’t getting more ink in the industry press, I don’t know, but the research asserts that the average American’s lifetime risk of needing SNF care is 60% greater than previously estimated. The U.S. Department 

of Health and Human Services has previously estimated that only 35 percent of older Americans are likely to use a nursing home in their later years, and other studies have concurred with this finding.

Although the costs of the stays are expected to be “relatively affordable,” the RAND researchers expressed concerned that consumers be informed of their findings so they are prepared. But their message is also an important eye opener (and opportunity) for LTPAC operators.

To get to their conclusion, the researchers analyzed 18 years of data from the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal project of the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security Administration. They found that for most people, “nursing home care will be relatively affordable—about $7,300 per person over a lifetime.”

Also interesting about the finding is the fact that some 43 percent of Americans between 57 and 61 will be completely covered by private or public insurance for their nursing home stay, while about one-third will spend any of their money on nursing home care over their lifetimes.

What’s the reason behind this revelation? According to RAND, the cause could be the shift to shorter stays. The study found that nursing home stays of short duration (21 nights or fewer) rose from 28 percent in 1998 to nearly 34 percent in 2010.

In the release, head researcher on the study, Michael Hurd, posited that the increase may reflect efforts to control Medicare and Medicaid costs by more quickly discharging patients from hospitals to nursing homes, where rehabilitation costs are lower.

While the opportunity here for LTPAC operators is apparent, experts who have recently weighed in on the outlook for this segment point to the fact that CMS is on track to ensure that 50 percent of fee-for-service Medicare payments be made through alternative payments models by the end of 2018. Providers who have learned to adapt to this new climate and take on risk through bundled payment initiatives, accountable care organizations, managed care models, among others, will likely be better off in the long run.

If you would like to raise your profile and tap into the longevity economy, contact Quantum Age today.

By now you’ve likely heard there is evidence that harboring negative attitudes about aging and older adults is bad for your health. In fact, a 2016 World Values Survey found that 60 percent of its respondents felt that older people are not respected. More than 83,000 people in 57 countries took part in the survey, which assessed attitudes to older people across all age groups. Interestingly (and sadly), the lowest levels of respect were reported in high-income countries.

This is just one of many sources that cite the presence of ageism and prejudice about older adults in our culture. And given that the demographic make-up of most of the world is becoming older and older, the impact of this kind of discrimination is destined to get worse, unless someone takes the lead in an effort to change it.

Which is where we, as aging services professionals, come in. Why should we take the lead? Well, there’s the obvious reason: ageism impacts the health and wellbeing of older adults—which it’s our business to protect.

To that end, a group of aging advocacy organizations, in collaboration with the Frameworks Institute, has created an excellent set of resources aimed at helping “advocates drive a more productive narrative about how to capture the benefits of an increase in the average lifespan.”

The Frameworks Institute set out to answer this question: How can the field of aging help build a better understanding of aging, ageism, and what will it take to create a more age-integrated society? To get the answer, the institute collaborated with a number of national aging organizations to conduct an “empirical investigation into the communications aspect of aging issues.”

Among other things, they conducted a Strategic Frame Analysis®—an investigation that combines theory and methods from different social science disciplines to arrive at reliable, research-based recommendations for reframing a social issue. They sought “expert consensus” from aging researchers, reviewed academic and advocacy literature, and interviewed members of the public and analyzed the transcripts to identify the
“implicit, shared understandings, and assumptions that structured public opinion.”

The toolkit offers the original research, evidence-based insights from it, and a “variety of materials to help you apply it.” The authors of the toolkit advise that while you won’t find ready-to-print “turnkey” handouts, it does include examples and guidelines that “help you work more intentionally and strategically to advance the conversation about older people in the United States.”

The Frameworks Institute research report includes the following four parts:

• Anticipating Public Thinking outlines how Americans mentally model aging and related issues, and it pinpoints where these patterns of thinking are likely to challenge efforts to advance an informed public conversation.
• Communication Traps cautions advocates against reframing strategies that seem plausible but are likely to have unintended consequences.
• Redirections outlines a series of thoroughly tested communications tools and techniques for reframing aging and ageism.
• Moving Forward offers concluding thoughts and a call to action.

The authors come to the conclusion that sharing and telling a common story is part of what it takes for a movement to drive major and meaningful social change.

If you would like a focused approach to taking the lead on reframing aging, facilitated by experts in the field, contact Quantum Age today.

The fine folks at AARP have once again produced an excellent and useful report for those of us in aging services who are always on the lookout for data, resources, and expert analysis. Released last month, the “Aging Readiness & Competiveness Report” accomplishes this on several levels: it helps us get a handle on how the rest of the world is responding to their aging populations, it gives us a perspective on how other countries treat their elders, and it helps us better understand how to maneuver in the longevity economy.

Developed in conjunction with FP Analytics, the report is lengthy but certainly worth a review. Following are some highlights that I hope will help you navigate it better:

1. It’s divided into sections by the 12 countries it covers: Canada, Germany, Israel, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, China, Mexico, Turkey, and South Africa. 

2. The countries were chosen because they are the largest economies by region, with the exception of Africa, where the largest upper middle-income economy was chosen. Together, they represent “61 percent of the global economy and nearly half of people aged 65 or older, and include a diversity of economic, social, and cultural contexts.” 

3. The countries are analyzed according to the pressures and opportunities each faces, as well as by their policy responses as they related to the following four pillars: Community Social Infrastructure, Productive Opportunity, Technological Engagement, and Healthcare and Wellness.

Regarding the latter item, this is where it gets interesting. The report offers a deeper dive into how each country is preparing for longer lifespans and declining birthrates. That said, here are some highlights:

• Community Social Infrastructure: As the authors point out, some of the most innovative projects around fostering social engagement, healthier lives and even economics returns can be found not in national policy but among local stakeholders such as municipalities, schools, and community organizations. In Japan, for example, the post office network in each community is being leveraged to conduct routine check-ins for older adults at a rather low cost. 

• Productive Opportunity: Among other things, a number of countries have created flexible retirement policies that enable older adults to reduce their work hours in exchange for working later into their lives. The report also cites the recognition of ageism among employers as prevalent among both high-income and upper middle-income countries. While this is not a new phenomenon here in the U.S., it is heartening to see that it’s being addressed around the world. In the U.K., for instance, the Age Positive Initiative (API) is cited as exemplary because it offers employers a toolkit to address “retaining, retraining, and recruiting older workers, as well as guidance for employers and staff regarding a range of issues related to ageism in the workplace.” Also in the U.K., the Now Teach program aims to “start a movement of senior professionals [by] redeploying their skills in the classroom and teaching the children who need it most.”

• Technological Engagement: According to the report, digital literacy programs tailored specifically for older students have yielded better results than those that are designed to serve a broader audience. This may be obvious, but the report cites “particular success” in training technology-savvy older adults who then help their peers learn digital skills. Senior Planet is noted as a “pioneering community center network that has placed digital skills at the center of all its activities.” Based in New York City, the organization shares information and resources “that support aging with attitude, and helps people who were born long before the digital revolution to stay engaged and active by bringing a digital-technology focus to a range of topics.” 

• Healthcare and Wellness: With only three countries of the 12 countries studied for the report requiring their citizens to have long-term care insurance, shortages in institutional capacity, and ever-present fiscal constraints, countries are looking to foster more home- and community-based care options. As in the U.S., many countries are turning to robotics and e-health as possible solutions to improve healthcare and remote access. In Korea, where Internet speeds are the fastest in the world, the nationwide broadband network is being leveraged to offer “more efficient and higher-quality care to its rural population” with services that include remote checkups.

Take the time to read as much of the report as you can, as it contains vastly more detailed information about policies, programs, and innovations in each of the countries examined. I promise you will find something of interest.

If you would like to raise the profile of your innovative services and products with a focused approach that is facilitated by experts in the longevity economy, contact Quantum Age today.

Why are most consumer marketers still segmenting by generation and focusing nearly all of their resources at the 18 to 34 year-old demographic? I am not aware of a solid answer for this phenomenon, except that these marketers are simply not as savvy as they ought to be on the potential of the older consumer.

The fact is that despite Millennials now being the largest generation (yes, larger than Baby Boomers), it’s theGen Xers (those born between 1965 and 1980) who spend the most money, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Yes, Xers spend more on housing, clothing, dining out, entertainment, and food at home—to the tune of nearly $67,000 per year. The next cohort of big spenders is—you guessed it—Baby Boomers (at $59,646). This BLS video explains in more detail how Millennials spend compared with other generations.

A recent article in The Telegraph examines how middle-aged women today are still saddled by stereotypes that have them wearing frumpy dresses, elasticized jeans, and “old-lady” comfort shoes, despite evidence to the contrary. According to a survey of women conducted by the British newspaper, 84 percent of respondents used “products and services they felt were aimed at younger women.” What’s more, 90 percent consider themselves to have a much younger attitude than their own mother’s generation at the same age.

And yet, marketers continue to zero in on Millennials “despite the greater financial firepower of 40-plussers,” the article notes. “We know that 85 percent of purchasing decisions are made by women and yet 91 percent of women don’t believe advertisers understand them. This isn’t good enough,” Rebecca Rhodes, cofounder of marketing agency SuperHuman, told the The Telegraph.

Gina Pell, a self-described “early internet entrepreneur who built a cult brand” (according to her LinkedIn page), recently coined the term “perennial” to explain why marketers should stop targeting and stereotyping people based on their age: “we are ever-blooming, relevant people of all ages who live in the present time, know what’s happening in the world, stay current with technology, and have friends of all ages,” she said in her blog post. 

There are several takeaways here for anyone selling, providing, or promoting services or products in this space. If you aren’t considering Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, you may want to rethink your strategy. If you’re already targeting these consumers, get to know them better! To begin with, none of the generations are made up of homogenous people. This may make it trickier to know what they want, but one thing is for sure, “middle-aged” women don’t want to be pigeonholed into ageist stereotypes (this previous post contains more details and insights about the generations and the longevity economy).

Whatever the product, solution, or service you offer, Quantum Age Collaborative is here to help you create innovative and unique solutions that tap into the longevity economy to meet consumer demands in new and relevant ways.

If you want candid feedback from experts in the senior living field, contact Quantum Age today.