The Super Age

Bradley Schurman

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780063048775
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Gerontología

A demographic futurist explains the coming Super Age—when there will be more people older than sixty-five than those under the age of eighteen—and explores what it could mean for our collective future.

Societies all over the world are getting older, the result of the fact that we are living longer and having fewer children. At some point in the near future, much of the developed world will have at least twenty percent of their national populations over the age of sixty-five. Bradley Schurman calls this the Super Age. Today, Italy, Japan, and Germany have already reached the Super Age, and another ten countries will havegone over the tipping point in 2021. Thirty-five countries will be part of this club by the end of the decade. This seismic shift in the world population can portend a period of tremendous growth—or leave swaths of us behind.

Schurman explains how changing demographics will affect government and business and touch all of our lives. Fewer people working and paying income taxes, due to outdated employment and retirement practices, could mean less money feeding popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare—with greater numbers relying on them. The forced retirement or redundancy of older workers could impact business by creating a shortage of workers, which would likely drive wages up and result in inflation. Corporations, too, must rethink marketing strategies—older consumers are already purchasing the majority of new cars, and they are a growing and vitally important market for health technologies and housing. Architects and designers must re-create homes and communities that are more inclusive of people of all ages and abilities.

If we aren't prepared for the changes to come, Schurman warns, we face economic stagnation, increased isolation of at-risk populations, and accelerated decline of rural communities. Instead, we can plan now to harness the benefits of the Super Age: extended and healthier lives, more generational cooperation at work and home, and new markets and products to explore. The choice is ours to make.

Part One

A History of Age

| 1 |

Underfoot and Everywhere

Change is inevitable. This is something that humanity figured out a long time ago, yet somehow it still manages to surprise the casual observer. People who identify, understand, and adapt or harness change are often the biggest winners in society—think Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett.

Sometimes change arrives slowly and without much fanfare. Other times, it rushes in with great flourish, a disruption event such as the global pandemic. Regardless, it is happening everywhere at every minute and every hour of the day. And you can experience some change in real time, if you know where to look.

The same can be said for the change that is happening to populations around the world. For most of human history, the average age of the population didn’t change much. Even in the darkest times—during wars, famines, and natural disasters—and periods of great advancement, societies remained, on average, very young places that were home to very few old people. That was due to the fact that the vast majority of individuals died during birth, infancy, or childhood. Only a select few were spared the challenges of malnutrition, natural and man-made disasters, and diseases to mature into fully formed adults. And even fewer of them made it to old age.

Since the beginning of humanity’s rush toward industrialization and progress, societies have been getting older. This shift started out slowly just over two hundred years ago, at least in the industrialized West. However, the demographic transition has sped up in the last hundred years and hit a feverish pace starting around the middle of the twentieth century—life expectancy nearly doubled and birth rates cratered. In some countries, the shift has happened at a quickened pace, occurring in less than a century for those such as Japan and a half century or less in some such as China.

Over the course of this decade, some of the world’s largest and most developed economies, as well as some of its smallest and least advanced, will become incredibly old. At least 35 of the 195 nations on this planet will have, at a minimum, one out of five people over the age of 65, the traditional retirement age, by 2030. In the next two years, those aged 65 and over will be equal to those under 18 in the United States. And by 2050, one in six people worldwide will be over 65, one in four in Europe and North America. The most surprising fact is that the number of persons aged 80 years and over is projected to triple, from 143 million in 2019 to 426 million by 2050, making this group the fastest growing demographic in the world.

Visualizing the Demographic Shift

For much of human history, population tables have looked like pyramids, with large numbers of children at the bottom and small numbers of old people at the top. The average human life expectancy, from the classical period up until the middle of the nineteenth century, hovered around 30 years. But this statistic distorts the picture of how the world actually was: a place distinguished by high infant and child mortality rates as well as poor public health and sanitation, and little financial security. Life was hard and relatively short for the vast majority of people, but in contrast, if you were wealthy and privileged, you had a pretty good chance of growing to an age we would consider old today. The best modern example of the former is Niger, the youngest country in the world, where more than half of the population is under the age of 14. In contrast, more than half of Monaco’s population is over 53.

Population Pyramid Niger (2022)

US Census Bureau, International Database

Population Pyramid Monaco (2022)

US Census Bureau, International Database

The demographic transition has come in waves and has been roughly tied to periods of great economic and technological development and disruption, such as the industrial revolutions. In his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, explained that there have been four distinct periods of industrial revolution throughout history, including the current one, which began in 2011. He described an industrial revolution as a period of a number of years during which the appearance of “new technologies and novel ways of perceiving the world trigger a profound change in economic and social structures.” Advances such as steam power, the age of science and mass production, and the digital revolution all preceded the dramatic technological and social changes that we are experiencing now.

As a rule, primitive society begins with incredibly high birth rates and incredibly high mortality rates, with most deaths happening among infants and youth. The result is low population growth and very few older people. Then, as a society matures and advances, living standards begin to improve. Access to clean water and safe food, housing and sanitation, medical treatment and vaccines becomes more commonplace, which reduces the number of people who die at a young age. Society moves from the fields to the factories—it urbanizes—and people become more dependent on technology to perform tasks they once did themselves.

Throughout this transition, people continue to have a lot of babies while, at the same time, they begin to live longer lives. This leads to a larger general population, as well as an older one. In the developed world, this process started near the end of the First Industrial Revolution (1760–1840) and continued at a quickening pace through most of the Second Industrial Revolution (1860–1920). In that period, the average life expectancy in the United States increased by about fourteen years and the total population more than tripled.

The graphs above were created by and are owned by the author.

As society continues its march forward and makes advances in areas of science and education, the likelihood of a child living into adulthood improves exponentially, and fewer children are born on average. Societies transition into places marked by low birth rates, low infant and child mortality rates, stable overall mortality rates, and increased longevity. This began during the end of the Second Industrial Revolution (1860–1920) and progressed throughout the Third Industrial Revolution (1960–2010) until today. The most impressive gains happened in the twentieth century.

The graphs above were created by and are owned by the author.

During the twentieth century, global average life expectancy nearly doubled. In richer countries, people started having fewer children, and the ability to reach retirement age went from a privilege reserved for an affluent minority to something that all of us began to expect. The demographic pyramid began to square off and the sides to slope far less steeply. Retirement communities, AARP, and my favorite TV show, The Golden Girls, were all products of this period. At the other end of the life span, teens and young adults emerged as separate and distinct groups of people, replete with their own wants and needs (and entire industries that wanted to serve them).

Aging has sped up in recent years, and a growing number of countries have passed or soon will pass the point where at least 20 percent of the population is over the age of 65. This change signals the start of a new era for humanity—the Super Age—the first time in the history of the world in which older populations will outnumber younger ones.

Making Sense of the Super Age

The Super Age world will be sharply different from the one we have lived in before. Germany, Italy, and Japan were the only countries that met the Super Age definition just a few years ago, yet ten countries went over the tipping point in 2020. Over the course of this decade, the percentage of people above what is traditionally defined as retirement age will grow in and meet this designation not only in industrialized countries but also in a growing number of smaller and poorer ones such as Cuba and Georgia.

Population Pyramid Germany (2022)

US Census Bureau, International Database

The Super Age has advanced toward us quietly and without much fanfare. In 2018, for the first time ever, there were more people older than 64 than children younger than 5 alive on our planet, and it barely registered in the popular media. In the Super Age, people will live far longer, we will have fewer children, and “post–retirement age seniors”—typically defined as people 65 and older—will become, at a minimum, a third of the population in some societies, as they nearly are in Japan today. This reality has already arrived in some rural counties across the United States.

If we do nothing about these demographic shifts, we will face some serious structural challenges. For example, if the retirement age doesn’t change and life expectancy continues to increase, there will be relatively more people claiming pension and medical benefits and fewer people working and paying income taxes. The fear is that this will require very high tax rates on the current, shrinking workforce, which will lead to increased generational strife and economic stagnation. A society that continues to time limit working lives to age 65 could also face a shortage of workers, which could push up wages, causing wage inflation and making everything more expensive for everyone—a particularly difficult burden on those that are retired or on fixed incomes.

Population Pyramid Italy (2022)

US Census Bureau, International Database

Population Pyramid Japan (2022)

US Census Bureau, International Database

The Super Age will also change the markets for products and services, creating opportunities as well as problems for some companies. An increase in the numbers of older people will create a bigger market for goods and services developed specifically for older people. In some cases, older people will supplant younger people in some product categories altogether, as in Japan where more diapers are now produced for adults than for children. However, all kinds of companies in nearly every product or service category will have to shift their business models to keep up with the aging consumer landscape. This is already challenging the way companies market to and communicate with their customers, as more and more are forced to consider how to engage either older or generationally diverse audiences—something they have never before had to do.

Americans over 50, for example, are already purchasing two-thirds of all new cars, and the average age of an Apple Watch user is 42 and is going up each year. Older people are also driving up the growth and cost of luxury apartment living in urban areas. Active, wealthier older people may be marketers’ new Millennials, meaning that companies may begin to focus their energies away from youth, a demographic they have targeted for nearly a century. If companies want to survive this period, they will need to develop products and services for older consumers or generationally diverse audiences.

In the Super Age, new approaches to education, including lifelong learning, will encourage older individuals to return to universities or enter training programs later in life. Learning should happen throughout life and not just at the beginning. These may be formal degree programs but could also be made up of training in technical or technological skills. Such programs will likely be the provenance of the rich to start with. However, they will be essential for all, if individuals are to remain active in the economy for their entire productive life.

The failure to address the Super Age in a meaningful way could wreak havoc on families, organizations, and countries and their economies. But if we choose to be proactive and confront the shift head-on, we will have an opportunity to make big changes that could have a lasting impact and create a more positive, productive life for everyone. There are also little things that we can do today and throughout this period as individuals, organizations, and governments to smooth the transition.

The covid-19 pandemic illustrated just how poorly prepared societies were for the shift to the Super Age. During the early days, way too much attention was placed on the disease being something that disproportionally affected the old—about 80 percent of all deaths were among people over the age of 65, and about 40 percent of all deaths were among people living in or working at nursing homes. At best, ageism and our general disregard for the oldest members of society—many of whom were highest risk—slowed our collective response. At worst, the lack of a prompt response helped create the perfect environment for the disease to linger, spread, and mutate, which resulted in the unnecessary deaths of millions of people worldwide, as well as stymied economic growth, which led to recession.

The pandemic also shined a very bright light on the inequalities that negatively impact the longevity of historically marginalized groups. In the most extreme cases, one or even two generations—up to around forty years—separate those with the highest longevity from those with the lowest in the United States and around the world. The latter have less time to earn a living, save, and pass wealth to their progeny, which contributes to the growing chasm of social and economic inequality that we’re confronted with today. Sadly, these individuals tend to get sicker earlier and more often than their privileged peers, which means they also bore the brunt of infections and deaths due to covid-19.

Societies will need to reimagine home and community to be more inclusive of people of all ages and abilities. Most communities have their roots in the early and middle twentieth century, when populations were a lot younger. These places, including some of the biggest cities in the world, are riddled with barriers that aren’t a problem for a younger, able-bodied population. Stairs are everywhere, including at the entrances to many transportation systems, and streets are often poorly lit. Many public spaces also lack areas to rest or use the toilet, two issues of importance for everyone at any age.

Construction of all projects, both new builds and renovations, should consider age in their design process by actively engaging an older or generationally diverse and abled population, and designers should consider the best ways to seamlessly incorporate accessibility into public and private infrastructure projects. Communities should work to make the built environment as barrier free as possible by incorporating the principles of hallmark legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act. And all individuals should be encouraged to consider longevity in home design through either tax incentives or public information campaigns, especially in areas such as the bathroom, where a fall is more likely to cause significant harm and hospitalization than a fall anywhere else in the home.

Many people also have to consider what living a longer life will mean for their traditional life course, since the Super Age will force us to reconsider not only the needs of older people but also how increased longevity is impacting the life decisions of younger populations. Many individuals will delay buying a car or a home, which will dramatically reshape those markets. More people will postpone getting married or having kids, too, and some may reject doing either or both altogether. A growing number of individuals will have multiple careers, many will have to work much longer than previous generations did, and most everyone will be a caregiver at some point. Some may even choose to rethink their death or at least their funeral.

All of these shifts will bring incredible opportunities, especially for the individuals and organizations that are willing to meet the Super Age challenges head-on...