Businesses have got one thing right: they know there are an awful lot of us. In about 15 years there will be 20 million over 60s in the UK. But beyond this they are getting so much more wrong, with a sadly simplistic view of older people.
First the idea of rich baby boomers. I hate that term. It has become almost a term of abuse. Baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are usually seen as selfish, wealthy, uncaring creatures who have used up the bulk of the world’s resources and now have a triple-lock on their pensions. Companies project their idea of us on daytime TV: smartly dressed, gliding up and down on stairlifts in the spotless, huge homes that we own, efficiently planning funerals and life insurance, or getting out of those funny armchairs that tip up.
And if we’re not rich baby boomers, we are lonely, tragic, pathetic, neglected figures like the old man on the moon in the John Lewis Christmas advert. This sort of portrayal from companies and advertising agencies only helps to set society’s stereotypes in concrete.
In reality we’re not all rich and spoilt or poor and burdensome, but fall into myriad groups: working, retired, sociable, lonely, robust, ambulant, bedridden, weedy, almost dead. We’re every class and every income. But we are all lumped together, from 60 to 90-plus. That’s a 30-year age range. No one would stuff 10-year-olds and 40-year-olds into the same category and try and sell them the same products.
The over 60s do, and are, all sorts of different things. We’re just like you, but grown physically older. We still have individual personalities. We may one day need nappies, extra healthcare and special handles on the bath, but in the main, for as long as we can, we buy normal things: clothes, food, drink. We don’t have a special uniform or want a slop diet. We like all sorts of music.
“I don’t want to sit around listening to fucking Sgt Pepper,” says Ian Whitwham, ex-teacher and now writer. “When I’m Sixty-Four was rubbish when I was 24 and more rubbish now I’m 74. Nor do I want to be tea dancing to Joe Loss when the grim reaper calls, or to go rambling with Swiss hiking poles or start quilting, or be congratulated because I’m ‘young at heart’.”
Whitwham is understandably cheesed-off with the persistent attitudes to our peer group. We may look different, but we feel much the same as we always did. If we’re dull/fascinating when we’re over 65, we were probably just as dull/fascinating when we were young. If we detested cruises when we were younger, we are just as likely to hate them now.
And it’s not just in the marketplace the misconception persists, but also in the workplace. There are a rising number of over-65s choosing to stay in work – one million, according to government statistics – yet only a small minority of businesses take the issue of an ageing workforce seriously. Up to the age of 70, older workers are just as productive as their younger counterparts, a government report argues (pdf).
Some companies actively employ older people, for example Barclays’ Digital Eagles programme. However, age discrimination remains commonplace and is often down to lazy stereotyping. As Rachael Saunders, from Business in the Community told the Guardian earlier this year, while a company would no longer get away with advertising for a woman or a white person to fill a role, saying “I’d like a bright, young thing to come and work for me” is still seen as all right.
None of this is helping society to prepare for a future top-heavy with over-60s. The young are our children, and most of us are trying to support them, with childcare, money, and a roof over their heads, whether we can afford it or not. And quite a few cannot. Like everyone else, older people also have their own wealth gap. According to Independent Age’s report, 2030 vision: the best – and worst – futures for older people in the UK, 1.6 million pensioners in Britain live below the poverty line (worse than the rest of Europe) and just over a quarter of single female pensioners have no savings at all.
Whitwham’s mother died miserably in a geriatric ward 30 years ago, along with many other dehydrated, poorly fed and neglected elderly people, and nothing much has changed. What kind of old age and death will be waiting for poorer elderly people in the future? 2030 Vision, written before the May 2015 election, was a response to the House of Lords’ Ready for Ageing report, which suggested that we are “woefully under-prepared for an ageing population”. It recommends long-term planning – for at least the next quarter of a century – to help see old people as a vital and positive part of society, not a burden.
Companies have a moral responsibility here, just as society does. As well as tackling age discrimination in the workplace, they could help by portraying older people as a more varied group, with varied incomes, requiring a large variety of goods, in varied styles. They could also portray us in a less condescending way, and as an integral part of society, as people who buy the sort of things that other adults buy.
