Are Politicians Too Focused on Older Generations? (Your Radical Questions with Professor Sarah Harper)

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1:45Sarah Harper:Hello and welcome to Your Radical Questions, where we put your questions to one of our guests. This is your chance to engage directly with the radical people we have in this podcast and to ask them their ideas for the future. I've still got Professor Sarah Harper with me. Sarah is a professor of gerontology at the University of Oxford and an expert on demographic change, ageing populations and the way societies adapt to longer lives. If you haven't heard our conversation from last Thursday, do go back and listen. We talked about why she believes our pension systems, workplaces and welfare states are still built around outdated assumptions about ageing and why she thinks it's time to rethink how and when people contribute through their lives.

2:28Sarah Harper:We also explored what an ageing society really means, whether longer lives should be seen as an opportunity rather than a crisis, and what a more flexible approach to work and retirement might look like. If you haven't listened yet, I definitely recommend going back and checking out that episode first. But now, Sarah is here to answer the radical questions that you've sent in. Sarah, thanks again for being here. Thank you. Cathy from Wales has sent some of her observations on the subject and a question. Let's have a listen. Hi, Sarah, it's Cathy here in Cardiff. I am 65 years old and will become eligible for my state pension at 67.

3:07I'm still working as I am one of my age group who is not wallowing in unimaginable mountains of money, contrary to popular misconceptions. I am also still working because I enjoy it. In addition, I make and will continue to make voluntary contributions to my local community, regardless of what age I get to. It is frustrating that my generation and those a little older are perceived of as overprivileged, but worse, a burden on society. I know you are someone who is working hard to change this narrative. quite rightly too as older people are contributing in so many ways and continue to contribute even if they are experiencing challenges to their mobility eyesight hearing or cognitive function so my question is this what can be done to get politicians and policy makers in general to engage with the real life stories of older people and how they are contributing whether that be financial capital social capital or in any of the other ways that are rarely included in economic calculations.

4:06What a wonderful question. And what a wonderful statement from Cathy. That was, I mean, that is absolutely spot on. And I think Cathy represents a huge number of people who are over 55, over 60. And here she is, you know, she understands the importance of being contributory. And again, I mean, this idea, and I think it actually came up in our discussion last week. The idea that all older adults in their 60s and 70s are sitting on mountains of money. I think we have nearly a third of our population dependent on the state pension. Sorry, a third of our older population dependent on the state pension.

4:44Cathy is representative of so many older adults out there. Behind the scenes, a lot of politicians are working on this. I was very involved in a big government review of this, and we actually managed to get it into the 2017 industrial strategy. So politicians are interested. Cathy, continue to tell your story. I think it's wonderful.

5:05Sarah Harper:What do you make of the idea that probably a lot of people my age, a lot of my friends would say, is that politicians are spending way too much time paying attention to older voters, younger people are ignored, and older people just have more power in our democracy. Do you think that's a complete misconception? What's your answer to that? Yeah, very, very interesting. So So all the surveys showed that actually, despite this misconception, many or most older people do not vote on age lines because older people remember they are often linked into families and they're concerned about their children and they're concerned about their grandchildren, for example.

5:40The problem is that for many years, politicians believe that they do. So politicians 20, 25 years ago, politicians would really start pushing things that they thought would be attractive to an older population because they believed that older people would vote for things that were just for them. And I just want to give a statistic that actually people often don't realise. So in terms of numbers, more people over 65 in this country voted to remain in the Brexit referendum than people under 25. And that's because people under 25 didn't vote in the referendum. And if those under 25s had voted, then we might have had a very, very different result.

6:24And to a certain extent, that shows that it is so important that politicians focus on younger people and engage them. And if there is one message to politicians, it's stop worrying about the older voter because older voters are going to vote for things that they believe in, not necessarily because they're 65 or 70. Focus on younger people, get them engaged in politics. That's what's so important.

6:50Sarah Harper:Thank you to Cathy for her question. The next question is from Ellie. Hi, Sarah and Team Radical. I'm interested in the idea of the retirement age being raised to 70. I feel that my generation, I'm in my mid to late 40s, the ones of us who are not earning a huge amount of money, I think are expecting to continue working well into our 60s and probably 70s as well so I'm interested to hear your thoughts on that and I also wanted to get your thoughts on something that's been bothering me for a while which is the sort of cultural gap that happens between the aging population and the the young generations and I feel like the older people are the more experience and wisdom they carry and it feels such a shame to live in a society that almost kind of keeps the two demographics so separate.

7:51I wondered if there's anything that can be done about this and if there are any other ideas that can bring older and younger generations together apart from just through family events. Thank you. Another fantastic question. If you are, you know, thinking 20, 25 years ahead, that's a very, very sensible thing. And of course, by the time Ellie gets into her mid to late 60s, everyone she knows will be continuing to work. But she may well not be working in the way that she currently is. So just a very sensible attitude.

8:28Sarah Harper:And that next part of the question about this resentment between generations, what do you make of that? Do you think that's confected or do you think there's something really there that younger people resent older people and older people likewise resent younger people? And I think we're all woke lunatics or whatever. I think it is almost completely conjected. And I'm really sorry, but I think the media's got a lot to blame. It's a great story, isn't it? Generational conflict. And yet most people live in families and they have mums and dads and grandparents. And if you're constantly being told as a young person that you're going to have to pay huge sums of money in order to keep very wealthy older people going, then inevitably you're going to start feeling resentment.

9:10It simply isn't true. And in fact, if you look at the figures, we have, if you like, two potential divides. We have the generational divide, but we have the socioeconomic or the class divide. And if anything, that is getting wider and wider. And we know that, you know, the top sort of 50 percent of the population who are, you know, well educated and many of them do have, I wouldn't say wealthy parents, but they have, you know, parents who maybe are able to help them and support them. that they probably are going to be even better off than their parents. But then if we look at the bottom half of the population, many of those younger people are going to struggle.

9:51And often I say to young people, you know, don't look at people older than you because, you know, they grew up in a completely different world. Look at your generation and, you know, you should be really aware of the fact that, you know, you are so much better off in life chances than people of your own age who don't have the education and health opportunities. So I really think we need to get away from this sort of generational divide. I think there's a really, among a lot of people, there's a deep sense of unfairness that you might be in your 20s or 30s, I think even in your 40s now, renting a room in a shared flat in London and thinking, if I had been born 20 or 30 years before when I was, my life

10:31Sarah Harper:would look a lot better now. Do you not think there is some sort of real cause for a sense of unfairness there? So all those girls, if they'd been born 30 years earlier, they probably wouldn't have gone to university. Let's be open about this. Education opportunities for women has changed tremendously. Health opportunities. If I had been born 20, 30 years before, I'd probably be fighting in the Second World War, to be honest. And, you know, if I'd been born in my grandmother's generation, I probably would have died in childbirth. We all have different opportunities. That's not to belittle the real challenges that many younger people have.

11:05And I think particularly in London, I mean, you know, London and the southeast, there are huge, huge problems. I have children in their 20s and 30s and I know the tremendous pressures from housing. So we definitely have to tackle that. But the idea that we make it a generational conflict, I think, is the wrong way to think about it. We work for everyone to have opportunities. So older people stay in work and we then focus on the issue which is tackling younger people, which is actually economic insecurity and things like housing. But in terms of health and education, if you'd been born 30 years or 40 or 50 years ago, your life would have been so different.

11:44Sarah Harper:I guess one phenomenon is that if this is, as you say, a kind of media driven intergenerational war, is it the case that it would be better if generations are more exposed to each other? There's a phenomenon people talk about age segregation, whereby I think increasingly younger and older people not only live in separate parts of the country and separate areas of cities, they're just less exposed to each other because we live in a society that is less communal than it once was. People don't go to church. They don't go to community groups where they would be exposed to other generations. And could part of the solution to this be a society that manages to mix older and younger people better than ours does?

12:19I mean, I think you're absolutely spot on. Sort of age segregation has got a lot to answer for. I have a colleague and he's done quite a lot of work looking at these sort of age integrated communities. And his view is, isn't this sad that we actually have to try and force generations together? Because naturally, we would historically have lived alongside other generations in a way that we don't at the moment.

12:42Sarah Harper:What could practically be done to make that situation better? Well, if you retain older adults within the workplace and don't just say, oh, they're mentors, but, you know, they're real work colleagues, then I think that would help. There are lots of intergenerational housing schemes now, which I think can be very beneficial. So there are lots and lots of age integrated schemes that are around, but some of them are just tinkering. We've had another voice note from Karina. Hello, my question is about the difference in healthy life expectancy in the UK, but also in most countries in the world, I would imagine.

13:20In terms of the differences between regions and especially social class, also possibly gender, how do we explain the healthy life expectancy differences in the UK, which are vast? and following up from that what do you think about the blue zones so-called blue zones in the world and can we learn anything from them in terms of the uk so should we be focusing more on lifestyle factors or technological and medical solutions to making aging a positive experience for all

13:55Sarah Harper:thank you i think it would be worth uh starting with the blue zones and explaining what karina is referring to there okay so the blue zones are a series of areas across the world where we have communities that appear to be very long-lived they're a bit controversial at the moment one of the problems with the blue zones is of course a lot of them are very rural areas and if in a rural area you're getting a large number of people who are 110 for example and say it's a rural part of let's take somewhere like Sardinia for example that that's one of them or there's one in Japan as well 110 years ago when you were actually born might be properly recorded and so we do think that possibly some of these very very long-lived people are not as old as they say they are having said that without any doubt there are large large numbers who are living well into their 80s, 90s and even into their early 100s.

14:59And what they have in common, I suppose, is that we really understand, if you like, the pyramids of a long, healthy life. And they are diet and exercise, social connection, some form of health and social care, a built environment or a natural environment that is conducive. So most of these are areas where people live a simple life. they don't necessarily have that much what we might think of as industrial stress they're eating simple food good quality not processed food natural food a lot of them are doing a huge amount of exercise throughout the day they're not going to the gym but they're walking up and down hills and they're doing agricultural work and so we've taken those as an example of how we can all live healthily and that actually sort of leads into this thing about healthy life expectancy because rather than there being a push for increased life expectancy in a country, it's far better that we have a push for healthy life expectancy.

15:59At the moment in most countries, at 60, there's probably maybe a six-year gap between life expectancy and when we go into ill health. And we really want to close that. Ideally, we want people to be healthy and as active as possible until the end of their lives. and we know that if you can start early and we're talking about children here when you reduce obesity and that means you know a healthy diet not substance abuse exercise we know that education seems to be related to increased health we try and reduce the if you like an urban environment which may have certain pollutants in it and we increase social interaction and social connection, then we know that if we can keep that up across our lives, then we can reduce the gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy.

16:54Sarah Harper:I'm really interested in those regional inequalities in healthy life expectancy. How severe is that problem of inequality? And is that something that's getting worse or are we getting better at closing that inequality gap? I think if anything, the inequality gap is probably increasing because people who live in more affluent areas, who are more highly educated, have higher incomes. They tend to be increasing their health. And sadly, through no fault of their own, people who are living in poorer environments are sometimes struggling to be healthy. And there's a really interesting piece of work, or we can say, I remember hearing a very sad sort of example of this, and that's around things like food deserts.

17:38And this is young mums who really want to feed their children healthy food, but they don't have a credit card. They can't do online shopping. They are, you know, a mile away from the nearest supermarket. The only place they can shop is the local shop, which probably does have, you know, crisps and sweets and fizzy drinks. And so, you know, they would like to have a more healthy lifestyle, but they're very isolated away from health. Whereas if you have a credit card, you can do online shopping or you have a motor car and you can go off and buy fresh fruit and fresh vegetables and good quality food.

18:15So unfortunately, we know that in our more deprived regions, healthy lives are not really increasing in the way that we should.

18:24Sarah Harper:I kind of want to ask how these disparities in healthy life would play into your idea that pensions should be linked to working contribution rather than to chronological age. Do you think this is something that is a challenge for your plan or do you think that's something your plan might help us deal with a bit better? A 65-year-old who is well-educated living in an affluent area, you know, as I say, has a life expectancy potentially, a man to 90 and very, very fit and healthy throughout his 70s. a 65 year old man who, you know, is living in a less affluent area and probably has had a very hard manual work and probably left school, maybe possibly at 16 or even 15.

19:04His healthy life expectancy has been reduced. So the sensible thing seems to be is that, you know, if you start contributing when you are, say, 16 and you then work for 40 years, you can retire in your late 50s, early 60s, and you still will be able to have maybe, you know, 15 to 20 years. And you can have exactly the same length of retirement if you don't start work till you're in your mid-20s, because you're a professional or you've done a lot of higher or even further education. And then you can, you know, retire at 70 and still have another 10 or 15 years ahead of you. That would be a first step.

19:41And the second step is to get everybody having equal educational and health opportunities. And we definitely don't in this country at the moment, sadly.

19:51Sarah Harper:Thank you. That was a great question from Karina. And next up is this one from Abigail. Hi, Radical team. Really enjoy all of your episodes. But for once, I think I've got something to say about this. As a recently retired 40-year-old in consultancy in Belgium, Sarah Harper's work on our 100-year lives leaves me with two big questions. First, how on earth will governments balance the books? We have fewer workers supporting many more people living into their 80s, 90s and beyond. AI could be an enormous economic opportunity. But only if we work out how its extraordinary productivity and wealth can contribute to society, rather than simply making their tech founders richer than the economies of whole countries?

20:41Second, are we completely underestimating older people as an economic and social resource? Instead of regarding healthy 70, 80-year-olds as unproductive, how do we harness their experience through work, mentoring, caring, supporting young generations, for example? So for me, perhaps Harper's ageing revolution and the AI revolution pose the same radical question. How do we rewrite the economic bargain between generations for a hundred year life? Looking forward to the answer. Thanks so much. Bye. Well, I did not invent the 100-year life. This was another academic. And all the evidence at the moment is that we're not going to get the majority of people in this country to live 100 years.

21:31And in fact, even the person who did invent it, in fact, has just published a paper last month where he really questions whether how many people are actually going to benefit from 100-year life. But I think some really important points were being made. They're very important. And actually, obviously we did tackle this whole question of AI and demographic change and the fact that we have no idea how that is going to spin out. But we have to make sure that everybody has the same kind of opportunities from it. And the really interesting thing, of course, is she was talking about this bargain between the generations.

22:07And that's the whole point. If we are going to have people living into their 80s and 90s and they're going to be stopping working at 50, then younger people who are going to be shrinking because, of course, the current generation are not having the children. So you can ask who's going to support them in their old age, you know, and that's the deal that they're thinking of, that if you have two or three children, then as you get older, there will be two or three children, you know, equivalent in a population. If you decide to be child free, then you are facing a future where there won't be people to look after you.

22:40So it is the current parents in a way who are actually framing this. And one way to cope with this generational problem is actually for people to work longer. So we will have people who are paying taxes and contributing more. We will have people who are contributing in a voluntary way or in a family way to society and will be pushing back the onset of disease and disability. So the equation does sort of work demographically but I completely agree of course it's being framed by other big big changes and the technological change is the sort of uncertain one.

23:13Sarah Harper:One other thing to pick up from that question is this idea that working later in life brings cognitive benefits social benefits are there any downsides to late life work i guess outside the obvious downsides of doing manual labor later in life is continued stress from work is that a problem that people might encounter as well so so definitely what the the research literature suggests is that if you are positive about working and in control of your work and that's why this idea of people working in their 70s, nine to five, five days a week is probably not what anyone is arguing. But if you're in control, you've got flexible work, you may be working from home or you're working part time.

23:51If you are out there, for example, in retail, leisure or care, then there are real positive benefits. If you are working because you have to work because you don't have the income, then there can be negative factors. But that's the same at every age. I think if you're doing a job that you really don't want to do and you're exhausted and tired. That's negative.

24:11Sarah Harper:That's interesting. Thank you. And thank you to Abigail. Jill has emailed us a question which I can read out. She says, if people were given the opportunity to continue working into their later years, what would the potential uptake be? I could have retired at 60 but continued to work full time until I was 83 because I couldn't see any reason not to. I loved my work in special education and was always offered posts that I applied for. I enjoyed the camaraderie and I liked the challenge. I still work at a local primary school two mornings a week. An observation could be that people might feel that they wouldn't be welcome in the workplace, but I have never experienced this, although I am regarded as a novelty among my peers.

24:51Sarah Harper:That's Jill's question. What do you think about that question about uptake? Do you think her experience is universal, that she finding work in later life is something that you're welcomed into and you didn't find any problem looking for a job? I think sadly that at the moment, that's quite a special case. it is getting better without any doubt the opportunities for older workers are increasing but what a wonderful example there she was a tremendous expert you know worked full-time and then when she wanted to she was able to go part-time and then she was able to work she said two mornings in a local school that is a wonderful example of somebody in control of their later life and it would be wonderful if most people had that and I think most people who were given the opportunity who want to work on would take it there will always be people who for whatever reason can't work past 60 or even past 50 or even past 40 actually i mean you know let let let's stop looking at these chronological ages in an ageist way um but let's ensure that people who would like to continue working have some opportunity to do that as this situation begins to hit home do you think there is potential situation in which people find the options available to them are less attractive, more limited, more stressful than they might hope.