A World Fit For Us

Have you ever thought about what it would mean to live in a society composed of very many more people aged over than under 50, including a huge bulge of very old baby boomers (like me) born in the late 1940s, and with a dearth of children, teenagers and young married couples? Well 2025 is the year that that demographic tipping point has been reached in Japan and most countries in the West are fast approaching a very similar scenario including our own. So, potentially, what will this inverted pyramid of population growth actually mean?

Well, amongst other things, fewer nurseries and schools, more residential care homes, fewer maternity units, more geriatric wards, fewer baby showers, more 100 year old milestone birthdays.

I have been reading an article about Japanese demography and the facts are mind boggling. Their current birthrate is the lowest since records began 125 years ago as the country’s demographic crisis deepens. The number of births has declined for nine straight years and appears to be largely unaffected by financial and other government incentives for married couples to produce more children. The 2024 figure is a 5 per cent drop from 2023 and the lowest since records began during Japan’s Meiji era in 1899.

At the other end of the spectrum, Japan now has a huge population of old and really old people. Japanese women lead the world in average longevity with an expectancy of 87.14 years, and, according to the health ministry charts, a male at age fifty can expect to live for another 32.6 years. In addition to this, the giant 8m strong generation of postwar baby boomers born between 1947 and 1949 have moved from the category of merely “elderly” to “advanced elderly”. All of which means that by 2030, more than 8m Japanese will be performing some sort of caregiving role, 40 per cent of those on top of an actual job.   

No population on Earth has ever been this old at this ratio to the rest of the population and with very many open questions about how it will cope. No population this peaceful, healthy and well-fed has ever shrunk at such a rate. Japan’s numbers are economically, socially and existentially terrifying, and, in case you are thinking “well, that’s on the other side of the world, so I don’t have to think about this”, then think again. 

Just this week data showed that the death rate in the UK has reached a record low having recovered when the trend was reversed by the pandemic. The registered death rate in the UK steadily halved from 1974 to 2011 largely driven by lower rates of heart disease and fewer smokers combined with various medical advances. Meanwhile our birthrate is also declining and is down to 1.57 births per couple, slightly above the Japanese average of 1.26, but it still represents the lowest rate on record and shows a decline of 3.1% year on year.

I suspect that’s enough statistics to convince you that the western world is facing a serious demographic shift from youth to old age. And, as someone who, with a birthday in 1947 has just moved, in Japanese terms, from the category of ‘elderly’ to ‘advanced elderly’, I am very interested in what all of this might mean for me (and I suspect for you too).  

Addressing the needs of the older generation was the purpose of a recent enormous trade fair in Tokyo called the Care Japan Show. This showcased the many industries, both Japanese and international that are already involved in, or rapidly adapting, to the service of the very old. There were robots for lifting people out of bed and other gadgetry showing that the Japanese are placing their faith in assembling a half-decent army of automata. Personally I’d far rather have a human being to look after me, but maybe, without enough younger people and with so much societal opposition to immigration, such solutions may soon be the only alternative.

All of which has got me thinking about my next twenty-three years if I have the good (or some would say) mis-fortune to receive my 100th birthday telegram from King Charles who’ll be sending himself one just a year later. I have some very practical suggestions for how the world could be re-ordered to better reflect the top-heavy shape of our population and to make it much easier for me to continue to thrive, to enjoy my life, and to stay independent for longer, so I thought that I’d share them with you:

How to Improve Life for an Ageing Population.

1. Design and Marketing. All businesses, without exception, should include panels of people aged 65 and over to advise them how to create or adapt products, goods and services to take account of their needs. In my experience most creative teams are composed of people under the age of about 30. In the early days of LFF we would often have meetings with creative agencies. I would come away quietly seething at their assumptions about me and about the audience we had for our products. Ageist attitudes are rife amongst marketeers, product designers and advertisers who can only see the world through a lens that denies our existence and ignores our needs.

2. Town and urban planning. A similar representation needs to be there when deciding on new developments. I am not at all keen on retirement villages, but all the millions of new homes that the government is proposing needs to include the kind of homes which attract people like you and me.

3. Getting Us to Spend Our Grey Pounds. Stop patronising us, stop medicalising old age and stop telling us we are going to die soon so that we need a nice, reassuring Pure Cremation Plan in place to take the pressure off our children when we die. There has been an improved degree of inclusivity recently, but the whole advertising industry really needs to rethink the way it pigeon holes the older generation. Aching limbs, incontinence and an inability to climb stairs and get in a bath may be problems of advanced age for some, but at the moment I have far more need to get out and about and to lead an interesting, enjoyable and active life than I do for these ‘solutions’.

4. Make Shopping a Pleasure Again. My local high street is disappearing before my eyes. Just yesterday I noticed that three more shops have closed in Wimbledon Broadway and our local large shopping mall has morphed into a huge entertainment and flexible working space. Gone are Debenhams, H&M, Gap, Jigsaw, Accessorize, Ecco Shoes, Wilco, Lakeland, Paperchase and many, many others. In their place have opened huge entertainment spaces - all aimed at the young and, especially, at fitness freaks. How short-sighted given the fact that most of those people are either at school or work for five days a week. Absolutely no-one sat down and thought about what could appeal to the older generation. So let me suggest some ideas:

• Provide extra seating everywhere and make the spaces comfortable, warm and welcoming. My local mall now has a large area of tables and chairs usually filled with people working at laptops and teenagers hanging out after school. There are never people there of my generation.

• Create appealing and non-cringey visual imagery (advertisements) that show that your shop welcomes, understands and caters to the needs of the older as well as the younger generation. Get over the idea that your market is exclusively youth orientated and any reference to older people will taint your brand.

• Remember that the older demographic is more affluent and is larger than any other and has the time and inclination to visit your space if they feel welcomed and included. Focus more on attracting us rather than excluding us.

• Offer spaces for activities and clubs that older people might want to join and attend during the day. Tea dances or other forms of dance, exercise classes geared for the elderly, Bridge clubs, Bingo, Rock Choirs, art and craft sessions or even lectures on a variety of subjects like gardening, history, literature or maybe a book club. This would attract many more older people to visit your shopping spaces and then you might be able to offer specific services - hairdressing, chiropody, beauty treatments, eye care etc to appeal to them and tempt them to linger and part with some cash.

See life from our perspective and help us to stay independent for longer

Getting dressed, putting on makeup, doing up jewellery, opening jars, tins and pre-packaged items are just some of the things which I now have to think about from a different perspective. 

• I live alone so a dress with a zip up the back cannot ever work for me, so how about a side zip if the shape doesn’t allow the garment to be pulled over the head?

•  How about someone really thinking about helping women with poor eyesight to apply their eye makeup? This could include imaginative magnifying mirrors of differing strength and some ingeniously designed eyewear.

• How about jewellery designed for fingers that have poor fine motor control/sensitivity? I recently bought an expensive necklace and realised after trying every morning for about ten frustrating minutes that I couldn’t operate the tiny, fiddly catch. I had to spend money having it altered - why hadn’t someone already designed it that way?

• And don’t get me started on sealed plastic items that even with scissors require strong hands to prise them apart? I have solved the problem of opening various items with some Good Grips aids, but why not rethink the ways that things are sealed in the first place?

Alongside robotics, the Japanese Care Show also featured a range of mushy food like steak flavoured mousses for those no longer able to chew. Which immediately put me in mind of Shakespeare’s thoughts about the final years of life: “The last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion: sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

Well, I still have all my own teeth, can still see perfectly well without glasses, even to read a menu, and can still enjoy the taste of a delicious meal. I just hope that before long the world adjusts to the reality of just how many older people there are like us and starts to think about more than incontinence pads and a nice funeral plan to make our lives easier and more enjoyable. 

And how about you - if you could wave a magic wand, what changes would you like to see which would really enhance your life?

Last week I had an amazing response to my post about who gets to define the truth. Thank you for helping to convince me that none of us is going mad and that 2+2=4 now as always.

Tricia x

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