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