The ‘baby bust’ is good news for older workers. Here’s why.
When was the first moment you knew you were “old”?
At almost 46, I had no idea I was just four years away from being classed as an “older worker”. Specifically, an “older worker” who qualifies for special help from the likes of the Centre for Ageing Better.
I discovered this personally devastating fact recently, while researching a client article about age-inclusive workplaces. It stung. “Old age is always fifteen years older than I am,” Bernard Baruch is supposed to have said on his 86th birthday. He’s right. I assumed an “older worker” would be more like 65, not 50.
Because 50 isn’t “old”… is it?
Maybe it just sounds like it. As I approach the 50 milestone, I’ve noticed the singular way in which popular culture deals with the ‘over-50s’ bracket. It’s… one bracket that lasts ’til death. For advertisers, “over 50” is a lottery in which you could be 51 or 76. Doesn’t matter. The message will be exactly the same.
(Imagine running an ad for the under-30s, with a five-year-old fronting the campaign?)
“The old and the zestless” (that’s an actual headline)
Governments and demographers are worried about the lack of baby-making going on around the world — or the upcoming ‘baby bust’ — because apparently, older people innovate less. According to psychologists, younger people have more of the “fluid intelligence” needed to “solve problems and engage with new ideas”.
Here’s an observation: articles that talk about older people use the words “greying” and “silver” a lot, and not in a positive way. In another Economist article on the ‘baby bust’, there’s a line that reads: “in much of the world the patter of tiny feet is being drowned out by the clatter of walking sticks.”
(Imagine writing an article about an upcoming baby boom, with a line that reads: “in much of the world experienced rhetoric is being drowned out by the squelches of nappy-filling”?)
Reading borderline-derogatory articles like these, I have to wonder: do older people innovate less because they lack “fluid intelligence”, or because the whole world thinks they’re past it?
It’s worth noting that studies and statistics about older people and innovation are necessarily taken from the past: the Economist’s article refers to patents filed over the previous 40 years. But an “older worker” in 1983 is not the same as an “older worker” in 2023.
Today’s older workers are not yesterday’s older workers, and they’re not tomorrow’s either.
In 1983 UK women could retire at 60, and men at 65. Many will have had grandchildren to help look after and a generous pension to help ease their way into a new, relatively comfortable, life.
Nobody would have expected a 60 or a 65-year-old to make innovative waves back then. Even if they’d wanted to, it would have been perfectly legal to tell them they were past it. The Equality Act of 2010 did not include provisions for age discrimination until 2012.
(You’d have to have gargantuan levels of self-confidence to challenge ingrained messages and expectations like those, wouldn’t you?)
The changing of the times
An “older worker” in 2063 will be vastly different still, especially if most of their cohort didn’t procreate. Undoubtedly, those non-parents will have more time and energy to devote to the things they feel are most important in life. For some, it’ll be rising higher and higher in fields they love. It could even include using their experience and still-present zest to ‘disrupt’ the occasional industry.
The signs are there. A default retirement age no longer exists, and neither do the vast majority of final-salary pensions. So since we’ll have to work for longer anyway, why not make the time count? The current generation of workers over 50 are already taking issues like menopause discrimination to task, rather than taking it easy. There is more of an appetite to learn, do, create, teach, and remain useful at work past the age of 65.
It’s even been suggested that advances in technology — and AI in particular — could help ease the pressure of an increased need for elderly care. Whatever the ‘baby bust’ has in store, it’s likely to lead to less age discrimination, more confidence, and positive changes to the way society views ageing, in the workplace and beyond.
Who knows what exciting changes might follow?
