Seniors are changing our society, economy. How can they really thrive?

By David Winch

Local Journalism Initiative

If you were gifted a “second lifetime”, what would you do with it?

The question isn’t often asked that way, but it should be. Seniors today have mostly received a gift of life-extension. While people living in their 60s, and even their 50s, used to be viewed as old and in decline, now their 70s are increasingly spent in fruitful activities and often in part-time or even full-time work.

The notion that reaching 70 is the Exit door for professional and social life has steadily been losing ground. Work years are being extended as the younger population stagnates. This has brought openings in the labour market.

The pension and benefits systems have not really caught up. Nor has the general culture. I noticed this recently when I was asked to check the boxes on a banking application, quizzing me whether, at 68, I was: Retired / Working part-time / or Full-time.

 Actually, in some tax years I’m all three!

Governments and voters also seem confused. The Harper government raised the pensionable age to 67, then the Trudeau government rolled it back to 65. In France, attempts to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 almost provoked a revolution.

Older workers can also be misconstrued as interlopers. In Ontario, for example, the retirement age for professors was broadly abolished in 2006, as long as these academics were “able to continue to perform their work duties”.

Media then focused on eager young grad students struggling to grasp the bottom of the career ladder as older faculty continued to teach into their 70s. But in truth, only a small minority of faculty in that age group chooses to keep teaching.

Historic age changes

I feel this “age-quake” in my own family. My paternal grandparents were born in the late 19th century, in 1898 and 1899 respectively.

As such, they were born on farms before the Wright brothers’ first flight, then lived well into the era of satellites and moon landings. This was an astounding era of technical progress, by far the greatest ever. Just as astonishing perhaps was the jump in life expectancy.

The data agency Statista notes that life expectancy for Canadians born between 1891 and 1900 was 52 for women and just 49 for males.

Since then, Statistics Canada reports that life expectancy in Canada has greatly improved.

“Since the early 20th century. The life expectancy at birth for men has increased by 20.5 years, from 58.8 years in 1920–1922 to 79.3 years in 2009–2011. During the same period, the life expectancy of women increased by 23 years, from 60.6 years to 83.6 years.”

Sure enough, my father —  born in 1927 — lived a decade and a half longer than his parents.

Better nutrition and the advent of mass vaccinations were crucial. The decline of infant mortality showed these gains. Anyone strolling the cemeteries of the Eastern Townships notes the sad evidence of many infant deaths. StatsCan notes: “About 1 in 10 Canadian babies died within the first year of life in 1921, compared with about 1 in 200 in 2011”.

If they survived, prospects were fairly good; by 1920-1922, one-year-old boys in Canada were expected to live until age 64.7 and one-year-old girls until age 65.3.

This extension of life led, paradoxically, to new dilemmas. In 1935, U.S. President Franklin D Roosevelt introduced Social Security pension payments, starting at age 65. While a great social advance, it was a cruel irony that most people would never live to benefit, as the median age of death in America was then 62 years.

Once everyone started to live past their mid-60s, however, public pensions anchored a new social class – retired seniors.

Changes shape attitudes

Pessimism and bleak perspectives have often darkened our views of old age. Stereotypes portray seniors as helpless dependants.

Folk balladeer Joan Baez in her song Hello Out There sings that “old people, they just grow lonesome”. Isolation is still a serious issue, but far from universal these days for active old folks.

French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir in 1970 wrote a weighty tome titled La Vieillesse (Old Age). Colleagues were not too supportive. She noted: “When I say that I am working on an essay about old age, most often people exclaim: ‘Quelle idée! But you are not old! Such a sad subject’. This is precisely why I am writing this book: to break the conspiracy of silence. Regarding the elderly, society is not only guilty, but criminal”.

De Beauvoir wrote astutely that the aged are not some separate class or category: “Old people are just young people who suddenly find themselves old”, she concluded.

Balanced against the negative takes is the modern retirement industry’s chirpy invocation of the “golden years”, or the cheerleading notion that “age is just a number”.

UN health agency WHO defines ageing more bluntly: “At the biological level, ageing results from the impact of … a wide variety of molecular and cellular damage over time. This leads to a gradual decrease in physical and mental capacity, a growing risk of disease and ultimately death.” Hence the pessimism.

Today, WHO promotes healthy ageing, which it defines as “developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables well-being in older age”.

That trend continues to change the economy. The Vanier Institute of the Family reports that data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) showed that “in 2022, approximately one in five people aged 65 to 74 were employed … these workers were more likely to report working primarily by choice than necessity”.

The more active seniors of the 2020s embody a new optimism. Fewer rocking-chairs are visible, especially amid all the leisure activities, part-time paycheques and continuing life interests. Long live that trend!