Old age is changing by leaps and bounds, both in terms of numbers (they are already 20% of the population and in 2040 it is estimated that they will be almost 30% with the addition of 14.2 million baby boomers) and in terms of what about his philosophy and way of understanding life.
Most of those now retiring have, on average, about 20 to 25 years of life ahead of them beyond 65 (longer than their entire childhood and adolescence and part of their youth) and, moreover, with resources. Two circumstances that until a few years ago were not widespread. Experts think that with them will come a paradigm shift that will put an end to the retiree stereotype. The big change, however, will come thanks to women, because now they are reaching retirement who joined the working world en masse and broke the exclusive role of housewives of other times, which not only revolutionized the labor and economic market of the 20th century, but also the social one. Women who, in the end, arrive with their retirement pensions, independent of their husband’s, as was the case until a few years ago. And, in addition, with higher education, which means an increase in pensions. “The change is huge”, says Julio Pérez Díaz, demographer of the Institute of Economics, Geography and Demography (IEGD-CSIC) and coordinator of the report A profile of the elderly in Spain (2023): basic statistical indicators “.
Few people doubt the effect that the boom in female activity, which took place mainly from the mid-eighties, will have on pensions. “Within the group of generations that we call the baby boom, the evolution of women’s participation in the labor market has been spectacular”, points out Juan Antonio Fernández Cordón, PhD in Economic Sciences and demographer expert from the University of Paris and member of ‘ Economists Facing the Crisis.
And it presents a revealing figure of what is to come: in January 2005 there were 4,634,658 retirement pensions, 66.4% corresponding to men and 33.6% to women. In June 2023, the number of men’s pensions had increased by 22.8% (0.92% annual average), and that of women by 65.6% (2.27% annual average) .
In Spain, according to statistical data from the continuous register (INE), on January 1, 2022 there are 9,479,010 elderly people. Women are the majority, and outnumber men by 30.5%, something that becomes more prominent as age increases. Octogenarians already represent 6% of the entire population, and will continue to gain weight in an increasingly pronounced over-aging process.
And this has only just begun. The elderly will clearly increase their presence until 2035, a legion of people who are physically fit, modern-minded, technology-savvy, independent, caring and eager to live (Spanish people currently live in good health from average up to 75-76 years). In addition, they have economic resources, as described by demographers and sociologists.
Older people who, unlike what happened until a few decades ago, reach the new stage of old age in the company of their partner. According to the report coordinated by Julio Pérez, the percentage of married men when they die is 60.4%, compared to 20.5% for women, because they live longer (in Spain women they have a life expectancy at birth of 85.83 years, and men, 80.27). But even this is expected to change and for the gap to decrease over the coming decades.
Enric Soler, associate professor of Psychology and Education Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), recently pointed out that a series of circumstances favor this paradigm shift in retirement and old age.
The first is that baby boomers have had better nutrition, hygiene, health care and working conditions, as well as higher levels of education than previous generations. And this improvement in the quality of life delays aging, he explains.
On the other hand, this large group is very used to big changes: they are the generation that went from dictatorship to democracy, that assumed a new European identity, that experienced the change from the peseta to the euro , the one that incorporated women into the labor market and also the one that has adapted to the change from the analogue to the digital world.
They are increasingly educated citizens, which leads to better wages and, therefore, better retirements. Currently, they represent 15% of the elderly. “The level of education is lower the more advanced the age. Among the adults there are still significant groups of illiteracy and uneducated population”, the CSIC report points out.
However, the generational transition over the past forty years has brought about a remarkable change in terms of the educational level of the elderly, with a reduction in illiteracy and an increase in the levels of secondary and higher education. “The current generations of young people are the most educated in history, a fact that portends a future old age with a higher level of education and, therefore, with more resources to face problematic situations”, points out Julio Pérez’s analysis.
