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Facts of Life

Facts of Life:
Issue Briefings for Health Reporters
Vol. 11, No. 11
November 2006
By Becky Ham, Science Writer

An Aging Marketplace

The Issue

The Facts

Infertility on the Internet

Expert Sources

References

The Issue:

Developed nations across the globe are at the edge of a major demographic shift that is unprecedented in human history. These countries will be dominated for the first time by citizens age 60 and older. This “age wave” described by gerontologist Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D., and others 1 is expected to transform global and national markets, just as this generation -- the baby boomers -- did in its earlier years.

Unpredictable Impact
Most experts predict the huge aging population will have significant impacts in many economic sectors, but the exact effects are still uncertain. For instance, it would seem safe to assume that national spending on health care will soar as the baby boomers enter their elder years. However, studies suggest that, in general, members of this generation are wealthier and less disabled than their parents, making it difficult to predict their overall effect on programs such as Medicare. 2

Aging in Place
One demographic-driven marketplace trend is already surfacing: the notion of “aging in place.” Surveys indicate that the next generation of older people would rather stay in their own homes and communities than move to nursing homes or other special care facilities as their parents did. In centers such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Age Lab, researchers are studying ways to retrofit homes, transportation and medical care with “smart” technologies that will help people stay as independent as possible as they age.

The Facts:

  • According to a United Nations report, people age 60 and older will make up 32 percent of the population of developed countries by 2050. 3
  • People over age 50 make up 35 percent of the American population and have 77 percent of the population’s financial assets and 57 percent of its discretionary income. 4
  • Driven by aging baby boomers, Medicare spending may grow to 9.3 percent of the gross domestic product by 2077 -- tripling its 2003 contribution to GDP. 5
  • In 2005, only nine of 145 medical schools in the United States had a geriatrics department.6
  • A focus group survey of people age 50 to 65 found that half of them would be willing to spend $100 a month for electronic monitoring technologies that would enable them to live independently in their communities. 7
  • The market for anti-aging cosmetics was $1.15 billion in 2005, according to marketing research.8
  • A 2003 study found that increasing numbers of workers in their 50s, 60s and even 70s consider themselves ready for a “midcourse” change in career, rather than retirement. 9
  • Only 31 percent of baby boomers think they will have enough money and be “financially secure” when they retire, according to a 2004 national survey. 10
  • A 2005 survey of baby boomers age 41 to 59 found that 13 percent of them are financially supporting both a child and an elderly parent. 11
  • In 2004, 13 percent of households headed by people age 55 and older owned a second home, compared with 8 percent for younger households. 12
  • Two-thirds of Americans age 65 and older say they choose food and alcoholic beverage brands based on special costs considerations, such as sales, manufacturer rebates or coupons. 13
  • In 2000, baby boomers were less likely than those age 65 and older to say that they planned on living in a nursing home at some point in their futures. 13

Youth the Biggest Market of All?

 The “graying of America” and much of the rest of the world has business poised to cash in on the special needs and desires of an older population. But what if one of the biggest desires of this booming market is to stay young forever?

The market for anti-aging products and services was about $20 billion in 2006 and is expected to grow by more than 8 percent each year to 2009. 14 Cosmetics, drugs, therapy and lifestyle prescriptions and even complicated molecular and hormonal treatments are part of the wares increasingly offered by what researcher Dr. John Morley of the St. Louis University School of Medicine calls “the merchants of immortality.”

The swell of anti-aging therapies is due in part to baby boomers -- and their particular attachment to youth culture -- entering old age, according to Courtney Mykytyn, an anthropologist at the University of Southern California who has studied the anti-aging industry. But boomers are only part of the story.

“People have wanted to live longer forever, and it could be that biotechnology advances have become so sophisticated that they have allowed our imagination to take us to the place where aging could be treated,” Mykytyn says.

Advances in stem cell and genome research “are in some ways reducing everything to DNA and molecular problems. We are rethinking what it means to be alive and what that means for aging,” she says.

Perhaps not surprisingly for a product as valued and elusive as “youth,” anti-aging therapy has researchers and practitioners arguing over the definition of aging, the effectiveness of particular treatments and whether anti-aging itself is an ethical goal. 15

“No intervention will slow, stop or reverse the aging process in humans. Whether anti-aging medicine is, or is not, a legitimate science is completely dependent upon the definition of key terms” that define life’s limits, writes Leonard Hayflick, Ph.D., a gerontology researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. 16

Age-associated diseases, cellular aging and the genetics behind a person’s longevity are all limits to life expectancy, but so far humans have been successful only at treating age-related disease, Hayflick says.

This hasn’t stopped marketers from selling dubious cures for aging such as human growth hormone, a use not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. After a 2004 survey, Boston University geriatrics researcher Dr. Thomas Perls concluded, “anti-aging quackery and hucksterism are pervasive on the Internet and in clinics advertising anti-aging treatments.” 17

But not all anti-aging practitioners and researchers are quacks, Mykytyn contends. Some whom she has interviewed were seeing too many older patients “losing their autonomy, and they are searching for alternative ways to practice a kind of geriatric medicine,” she says.

Many practitioners told her they spent more time than regular doctors counseling their patients in nutrition, exercise and other lifestyle adjustments that could help them feel, if not become, younger.

“There is this sense that anti-aging practitioners feel like they’re doing something that’s different, but really shouldn’t be different,” from regular geriatric practice, Mykytyn says.

Expert Sources:

John Morley, M.D.
Saint Louis University School of Medicine
(314) 977-8462
morley@slu.edu

Courtney Mykytyn
University of Southern California
(213) 740-1900
everts@usc.edu

Thomas Perls, M.D., M.P.H.
Boston University
(617) 638-6688
thperls@bu.edu

Joseph Coughlin, Ph.D.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(617) 253-4978
coughlin@mit.edu

References

  1. K. Dychtwald (1999) Age Power: How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled By The New Old. New York: Putnam.
  2. D.P. Rice and N. Fineman (2004) Economic implications of increased longevity in the United States. Annual Review of Public Health, 25:457-473.
  3. A. Golini, Jr. (2006) Challenges of the world population in the 21st century: the changing age structure of population and its consequences for development. Panel discussion, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, United Nations. Last accessed 10-22-06 at http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/2006Ageing_Panel/Age_Structure.htm.
  4. W.D. Novelli. “How Aging Boomers Will Impact American Business.” Speech before The Wisemen, at the Harvard Club, 21 February 2002.
  5. Medicare Board of Trustees (2003) 2003 annual report of the board of trustees of the federal hospital insurance federal supplementary medical insurance trust funds. Washington, DC. Last accessed 10-22-06 at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/ReportsTrustFunds/01_Overview.asp.
  6. J. Gross. “Geriatrics Lags in Age of High-Tech Medicine.” The New York Times, October 18, 2006.
  7. Center for Aging Technologies. “Boomers Willing to Pay for Technology That Allows Parents, Selves More Independent Living.” News release, 11 July 2005; last accessed 10-22-06 at http://www.agingtech.org/documents/071105FocusGroupRelease.doc.
  8. C. McConnel1 and L. Turner (2005) Medicine, ageing and human longevity. EMBO Reports, 6( S1), S59–S62.
  9. P. Moen (2003). Midcourse: “Navigating retirement and a new life stage.” In J. Mortimer and M.J. Shanahan (Eds.), Handbook of the life course. New York: Plenum.
  10. AARP (2004) “Baby Boomers Envision Retirement II: Survey of Baby Boomers’ expectations for retirement. Survey prepared for AARP by Roper ASW. Last accessed 10-22-06 at http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenters/econ/boomers_envision.pdf.
  11. Pew Research Center (2005) Baby Boomers Approach Age 60: From the Age of Aquarius to the Age of Responsibility. A Social Trends Report. Last accessed 10-22-06 at http://pewresearch.org/social/pack.php?PackID=6.
  12. E. Landry. “Half of All Households Will Be 55+ or Older by 2011.” Nation’s Building News, 31 July 2006. Last accessed 10-22-06 at http://www.nbnnews.com/NBN/issues/2006-07-31/50Plus+Housing/index.html.
  13. E. Lee et al. (2000) The Maturing Marketplace: Buying Habits of Baby Boomers and Their Parents. Westport, CT: Quorum Books.
  14. The Freedonia Group, Industry Research. (2005) Anti-Aging Products to 2009 - Demand and Sales Forecasts, Market Share, Market Size, Market Leaders. Last accessed 10-22-06 at http://www.freedoniagroup.com/Anti-aging-Products.html.
  15. J.Q. Trojanowski et al. (2005) The art and science of anti-aging therapies. Science of Aging Knowledge Environment, 17, 11.
  16. L. Hayflick (2004) “Anti-aging” is an oxymoron. The Journals of Gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences. 59, B573-578.
  17. T.T. Perls (2004) Anti-aging quackery: human growth hormone and tricks of the trade--more dangerous than ever. The Journals of Gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences. 59, 682-691.

The Center for the Advancement of Health identifies and disseminates state-of-the-science evidence about the influence of behavioral, social and economic factors on disease and well-being. Its purpose is to support health decision-making by the public and strengthen relationships among researchers and policymakers. The Center receives funding from a number of foundations, principally The Annenberg Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

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Lisa Esposito
Editor, Health Behavior News Service
Center for the Advancement of Health
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p. 202.387.2829 / f. 202.387-2857
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