The New Multistage Life
What This Means For 60s-Plus Female Authors
I’m reading Susan Wilner Golden’s book Stage (Not Age): How To Understand And Serve People Over 60—The Fastest Growing, Most Dynamic Market In The World.
This will be a fascinating read, given our shared interest in the book market for female authors aged 60 and above. I’ll share below what I’m learning as I read it.
Introduction
It’s probably not news to most of you that Japan’s population is ageing, with one-third of the population over sixty-five. In the United States, more than 10,000 people turn 65 daily. With the one exception of Africa, older people will soon outnumber younger people virtually everywhere. Think of the implications of that.
If you are sixty-five and your health is good, you will likely live well into your nineties. I’m 83, and I plan to be around to write at least two more books before I get serious about my iPhone photography!
Golden argues that it's time to stop defining people by age and start thinking about what stage older adults are in. This is the significant shift required: to recognise stage, not age.
For Golden, it’s out with the old paradigm of what used to be called ‘old people’ and in with the new paradigm she terms the five quarters or 5Qs.
It’s out with full retirement age and in with the great repurposing instead.
With Golden’s help, we will learn to understand and serve people over sixty, the world’s fastest-growing, most dynamic market—the market that will be crying out for our books!
The Old Paradigm
We need this shift in understanding here in Australia, where, sadly, the ‘old people’ paradigm is alive and well. In an article in The Senior, reporter Desiree Savage interviewed Dr Marlene Krasovitsky, who is currently consulting with the World Health Organisation about how to combat ageism. Dr Krasovitsky states that ageist attitudes have become so pervasive and acceptable that a person may not realise they are being biased. She cites narratives about the ‘silver tsunami’, ‘greedy baby boomers’, and ‘the burden on an ageing population’, which she states feeds fear that ‘civilisation as we know it will be destroyed’.
These narratives fuel one of the pervasive myths with which we are all familiar. This is the myth that the collective ‘beauty market’ manipulates so skillfully, namely that younger is better. We need all the help we can get to shift the ageist narrative.
So, let’s move on to see what we can learn from Chapter 1 in Golden’s book.
The Concept of Healthspan
Healthspan refers to the period when we experience largely independent and healthy living, free from serious diseases. It differs from the longevity industry’s efforts to extend lifespans through drugs and therapies. Opportunities lie in extending people’s healthspan so they can enjoy living to one hundred.
It's no surprise that the key here is Education. Golden states that education is ‘the single greatest determinant of health status’. The higher your education, the greater your opportunities, including access to quality housing, nutritious food, and good healthcare.
Education & Work
Golden wonders if it would be wiser to spread education out. She gives the example of stretching undergraduate education over a six-year period, with a break in between for an internship and work experience, to help ‘better inform a student’s interests.’
She asks if caregiving breaks should become the norm in early career stages and whether the most productive working years should begin after child-rearing. Such innovations will be required to support a multistage life.
The Old Narrative
It is interesting to observe how the growing shift in demographics is reflected in different spaces when compared to the approach taken by Golden.
For example, in one of the University of Sydney’s Opinion pieces, Confronting ageing: the talk Australia has to have, Professor Lee-Fay Low speaks of the need for a ‘confronting conversation’ about ageing and how ‘society pays the inevitable cost.’
She refers to the doubling of health spending on ‘older Australians’ and concerns regarding the cost of aged care to the government. She raises the spectre of including the family home's value in assets and charging more for those deemed able to pay for aged care. We are told that ‘children of older people, and their wider families, could bear a greater responsibility to contribute to care costs.’ She says any changes are ‘likely to be politically unpalatable’.
Her narrative paints a pretty grim picture. However, we are then told that businesses could start to view older people as a workforce asset, with older individuals being ‘enticed’ to continue working.
There is no mention of healthspan or life stages. However, Professor Low does say that businesses already recognise ‘older people’ as powerful consumers and tailor entertainment, leisure, and healthcare to them, giving me the impression of a somewhat passive consumer.
Reimagining
On the other hand, Golden states that ‘A forty-year work span can rarely support a forty-year retirement.’ But then she says, ‘People will experience a variety of purposeful and active stages between the traditional retirement of sixty-five and their end of life, in their nineties or beyond.’
She introduces us to the growing practice in the US of large companies offering ‘paid ‘“returnship” programs.’ She suggests there may be no retirement, but instead, there will be “unretirement.’” She envisions twenty-year-olds and seventy-year-olds learning together remotely or in classrooms, as part of lifelong learning. She imagines multigenerational customers using products and services that will span ‘fifty to sixty years.’
This requires a new framework for recognising the new multistage life and new vocabularies that go beyond replacement for words such as ‘middle-age’. Golden wants a ‘reimagining of the life course that can span one hundred years.’
Stage Not Age
This necessitates a complete mindset change to ‘integrate the stage, not age, concept when considering longevity opportunities.’ She reminds us that people fifty and over account for 50 per cent of consumer spending in the US and 83 per cent of household wealth.
Particularly relevant to us as writers is that this demographic represents ‘the largest and one of the fastest-growing business opportunities in the US and worldwide.’
Book Opportunities
If you are a woman who has worked in any sphere of education, this is your opportunity to use that knowledge and experience to write a book that addresses the concept of lifelong learning within the new multistage life.
If you are a fiction writer, the possibilities for stories that resonate with your readers, dealing with this new reality, are endless.
Even Professor Low has something relevant to say on the subject: ‘There are fewer stories about growing old and finding new loves, starting new jobs and having more adventures.’
We have taken this on board in my Writing Group, and we are collectively writing a Seasoned Romance, which I am documenting here.
Coming Next
In my next post, I will explore what Golden says in Chapters 3 and 4—Marketing to Stages and Finding Your Longevity Opportunity. My third post will be on Chapters 5 and 7—Identifying Your Customer and The Entrepreneur’s Opportunities. These chapters will, I believe, be the most helpful regarding writing and publishing books as a 60s-plus female author.
Have you heard of the concept of Stage Not A’ before? How do you think our extended lifespan will impact you? Do share your thoughts in the comments below.