In its latest issue, the British magazine "The Economist" brought a special report on the economics of longevity, noting that in 1950 only 5% of the world's population was over 65;In 2015 this percentage was 8%; And in 2050, it will be 16%, and rich countries will pull the block of white hair. There are pessimists (among them the International Monetary Fund, the infamous IMF) worried about the imbalance between the declining young workforce and the elderly receiving their pensions and overburdening the health care system. This is what the publication called the "silver clock bomb," but there are alternatives for aging to be more for bonuses than for burdens. First of all, as this blog has pointed out many times, there is the undeniable fact that these new old, baby boomer generation, are different.There is a growing contingent of healthy, active 65-year-olds who will continue to produce not only because they need it, but because they want and can, that is, have social and intellectual capital for it. According to "The Economist," it is what can disarm the "silver bomb" and result in oxygenation in the economy, with new services and, above all, senior entrepreneurs.
In the US, those between the ages of 55 and 65 are 65 percent more likely to open their own business than adults between the ages of 20 and 34, according to the Kauffman Foundation. In Japan, there are already companies that help their employees take the first steps in entrepreneurship. The magazine reports that insurer Aegon found in a survey that more than half of workers over 55 would like to have a flexible transition to retirement, but only 25% said their employers would agree to work part-time. According to Deutsche Bank's senior policy officer in Germany, senior employees may be a bit slower on a day-to-day basis, but they make fewer mistakes, so the company prefers intergenerational groups.
Unfortunately, here and out there, most can not save enough. Brazil is in the lantern of a list of ten nations, with the lowest percentage of the population above the age of 15 that declares to save for retirement. This was the diagnosis of the economist José Roberto Afonso, from the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro: only 4.7% of the richest 60% save money for this purpose and, among the poorest 40%, participation is 2.1%. Brazil looks bad in the picture even compared to other low-income countries, so we have a lot to learn and teach our children and grandchildren. Even so, the new old people have more money to spend than previous generations. It is estimated that the global purchasing power of baby boomers will exceed $ 30 trillion by 2020, according to world consumption survey commissioned by Tetra Pak, which interviewed 40,000 people. The technology market can live a boom to ensure maximum autonomy and independence for the elderly.Financial products will have to adapt to longevity. In the area of health and well-being, the range of services is almost unlimited, since people will live decades with chronic diseases.This group also wants fun: in the US, 40% of adventure tourists, trekking or going to exotic destinations, are over 50 years old. McKinsey Consulting predicts that by 2030, most of the growth in consumption in large cities will come in the 60s.
Photo: By Sigismund von Dobschütz - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0