In a society of longevity, seniors are more than a “silver economy”

How will we live in an old­er world?

Anne-Marie Guille­mard. To answer this ques­tion, let’s go back to the idea behind it – age­ing. In Europe, Asia, and even Brazil, the age pyra­mid is chang­ing shape: the pro­por­tion of peo­ple over 65 is increas­ing, and the pro­por­tion of peo­ple over 80 is now sig­nif­i­cant. The trend con­tin­ues: chil­dren born today will have a good chance of being centenarians.

But when we talk about “age­ing” we only see the neg­a­tive effects and we miss the essen­tial point of the longevi­ty rev­o­lu­tion. Life expectan­cy at the age of 60, which in West­ern Europe remained vir­tu­al­ly unchanged between 1845 and 1945, has increased rapid­ly since the Sec­ond World War. In France it is now 28 years for women and 23 years for men. As such, we have entered a “long life society”.

So, let me rephrase: an old­er world? No: longer lives. It is not the same thing. But under­stand­ing this new real­i­ty is not easy. The first chal­lenge is to decon­struct rep­re­sen­ta­tions, to grasp the promis­es of this new world instead of pan­ick­ing about them.

First, longevi­ty is not a dis­abil­i­ty. It is the oppo­site: retired peo­ple are liv­ing longer and longer in good health. The ques­tion of loss of auton­o­my is aris­ing lat­er and lat­er. Sec­ond, con­sid­er­ing only the social cost of retirees obscures the con­tri­bu­tion they can make to soci­ety. Final­ly, the pro­mo­tion of the “sil­ver econ­o­my” con­tributes to dis­tort­ing the per­spec­tive by reduc­ing seniors to their pur­chas­ing power.

What is the basis for a new rep­re­sen­ta­tion and action strategy?

It will be based main­ly on two ele­ments. The first is to con­sid­er seniors as a resource, the sec­ond is to bet­ter take into account the diver­si­ty of sit­u­a­tions and needs at the same age, which inval­i­dates the pre-emi­nence of age-based man­age­ment of populations.

First­ly, longer life expectan­cy gives old­er peo­ple new resources that we must try to opti­mise for the ben­e­fit of soci­ety as a whole. In France in par­tic­u­lar, the obses­sion with age­ing and the reduc­tion of the risks and costs that it gen­er­ates has obscured the con­tri­bu­tions made by the progress of longevity.

Expe­ri­enced employ­ees can be an asset for com­pa­nies, pro­vid­ed that they know how to main­tain their skills. The skills of old­er peo­ple can also be expressed in infor­mal work or vol­un­tary work. They cre­ate val­ue for com­pa­nies and for the country.

The urgent need is not to reform pen­sions, but to make it attrac­tive and sus­tain­able to pro­long work­ing life in order to opti­mise the new capac­i­ties of old­er peo­ple for the ben­e­fit of all. This change of out­look and strat­e­gy is par­tic­u­lar­ly urgent in France, where the employ­ment rate of 60–64 year olds is the low­est of the OECD coun­tries, at 33% com­pared to 52% on aver­age and 70% in Swe­den. It would call for proac­tive poli­cies to sup­port and accom­pa­ny com­pa­nies to help them offer real and sus­tain­able work prospects to their employ­ees in the sec­ond half of their careers.

In North­ern Europe, coun­tries that have pro­longed work­ing life have pur­sued upstream poli­cies and invest­ed in employ­ees. It is the forty-some­things who must be tar­get­ed if we want to have suc­cess­ful fifty-some­things and active six­ty-some­things. Every­one must be offered a future.

Fin­land has made a con­sid­er­able effort in life­long learn­ing. In the 2000s, it set up an “age man­age­ment” pro­gramme for com­pa­nies and man­agers, offer­ing advice based on stud­ies. For exam­ple, when work­ing con­di­tions or the organ­i­sa­tion of work in a work­shop or office are improved to make them more suit­able for old­er peo­ple, the return on invest­ment can be dou­bled in terms of work productivity.

You men­tioned the need to break with a seg­ment­ed and fixed con­cep­tion of life stages and the cor­re­spond­ing policies?

The age-based man­age­ment of pop­u­la­tions is no longer adapt­ed to the new flex­i­ble and indi­vid­u­alised life paths that a long-liv­ing soci­ety has brought about. The three-stage life course of the indus­tri­al soci­ety: train­ing / employ­ment / retire­ment, has been dis­rupt­ed by the length­en­ing of life and the advent of a post-indus­tri­al soci­ety. The sequences of employ­ment, edu­ca­tion, fam­i­ly life and leisure are now com­bined in no par­tic­u­lar order at all ages.

Advanc­ing age has become a con­tin­u­ous process of self-con­struc­tion and recon­struc­tion through the tri­als and tribu­la­tions encoun­tered, which dif­fer from one indi­vid­ual to anoth­er. There­fore, in order to meet their needs, it is nec­es­sary to take into account not the age of the indi­vid­u­als but the diver­si­ty of their back­grounds. A 50-year-old senior cit­i­zen in late par­ent­hood does not have the same vision of retire­ment as some­one whose chil­dren are already married.

It is the forty-some­things who must be tar­get­ed if we want to have suc­cess­ful fifty-some­things and active six­ty-some­things. Every­one must be offered a future.

In 1945, when pen­sion schemes were intro­duced in many devel­oped coun­tries, every­one had a rough­ly iden­ti­cal life course. The main vari­able was the length of edu­ca­tion. But every­one moved at the same pace, with rel­a­tive­ly stan­dard chrono­log­i­cal ages.

Today, we must move towards a cho­sen retire­ment, with a rea­son­able min­i­mum age and incen­tives to con­tin­ue. Fin­land and Swe­den have abol­ished any legal cut-off age. The Finns have increased the employ­ment rate of 60–64 year olds while keep­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of leav­ing at 61 or 62.

Does the same log­ic apply to old age, where the issue of auton­o­my can catch up with us?

Yes: spe­cif­ic needs then arise. But some peo­ple are aware of them, oth­ers are not. And when they appear, it is not at the same age. Final­ly, they may call for very dif­fer­ent respons­es in terms of accom­mo­da­tion and asso­ci­at­ed services.

Here again, it is dif­fi­cult to respond to the diver­si­ty of sit­u­a­tions. Poli­cies cre­ate mono­lith­ic rights that open up at this or that age. Indi­vid­u­als focus on needs that will only con­cern them for a few years of their lives – the aver­age stay in an old people’s home is no more than three years. All this cre­ates rigid­i­ty and inad­e­quate respons­es when what is need­ed is flex­i­bil­i­ty and the abil­i­ty to choose from bas­kets of services.

On what basis should new poli­cies be organised?

We need to think of them as life cycle poli­cies, based on sev­er­al ele­ments.  The first is to put an end to poli­cies seg­ment­ed by age, by organ­is­ing mod­u­la­tions accord­ing to needs, pos­si­bil­i­ties, and aspirations.

The sec­ond ele­ment is to favour a pre­ven­tive rather than a cura­tive approach. Regard­ing the employ­a­bil­i­ty of “young” seniors, and the fragili­ty of the elder­ly (iso­la­tion, mal­nu­tri­tion), it is bet­ter to act upstream to be effec­tive. The length­en­ing of life means that we must give pri­or­i­ty to pre­ven­tion over cure.

The third ele­ment is the range of choic­es. The more we aspire to be able to gov­ern our lives, the more we need to open up life choic­es. This has a par­tic­u­lar impact on res­i­den­tial life, which should be made eas­i­er and more flu­id. Well-designed poli­cies would make it pos­si­ble to free up sav­ings that are cur­rent­ly locked up in prop­er­ty assets for fear of depen­den­cy, and to direct them towards pro­duc­tive invest­ments. Open­ing up choic­es for our seniors would ben­e­fit everyone.

Interview by Richard Robert