Health
Boomers: Long Healthy Years Ahead
Generational expert Ken Gronbach says healthcare marketers had best "forget about baby boomers filling hospitals and old age homes -- they won't be ready for a long time."
But Gronbach questions the conventional wisdom that Americans are living longer and says that developers need to rethink their plans to meet the aging baby boomers' health needs. Gronbach, president of KGA Advertising in Middletown, Conn., says the nation has "more people today over 80 because their population wave was larger. They are not living longer, there's just more of them."
Citing census figures, Gronbach says the population swells and ebbs every 20 years. The "GI Generation" is now more than 70 years old, marking a population peak of 20 million, he says. Boomers, now 35 to 50 years old and numbering 75 million, are driving an increase in new health care facilities.
Then there's the Silent Generation -- aged 51-70 -- numbering only 30 million; too small, Gronbach says to fill all the facilities currently being built, and eventually resulting in empty beds.
Gropnbach says his study indicates Boomers are overwhelmingly rejecting the image of needing nursing care in the near future and will be working well into their 70s before they even start thinking of themselves at retirement age.
"Developers who are currently building nursing facilities and marketers who are manufacturing 'old age' products for the boomer population had better wake up to the fact that they are about 25 years off," Gronbach warns. "When John Travolta checks in to a nursing home, we'll know it's about time."
But Gronbach questions the conventional wisdom that Americans are living longer and says that developers need to rethink their plans to meet the aging baby boomers' health needs. Gronbach, president of KGA Advertising in Middletown, Conn., says the nation has "more people today over 80 because their population wave was larger. They are not living longer, there's just more of them."
Citing census figures, Gronbach says the population swells and ebbs every 20 years. The "GI Generation" is now more than 70 years old, marking a population peak of 20 million, he says. Boomers, now 35 to 50 years old and numbering 75 million, are driving an increase in new health care facilities.
Then there's the Silent Generation -- aged 51-70 -- numbering only 30 million; too small, Gronbach says to fill all the facilities currently being built, and eventually resulting in empty beds.
Gropnbach says his study indicates Boomers are overwhelmingly rejecting the image of needing nursing care in the near future and will be working well into their 70s before they even start thinking of themselves at retirement age.
"Developers who are currently building nursing facilities and marketers who are manufacturing 'old age' products for the boomer population had better wake up to the fact that they are about 25 years off," Gronbach warns. "When John Travolta checks in to a nursing home, we'll know it's about time."
