Key findings:

• Jennifer Jaynes from Blackpool Council explains how her authority is developing public services for an ageing society.

• Celia Hannon and Richard Reeves provide inspiration to innovators for the baby boomer market.

• David Brindle argues retirement isn’t working. Our notion of retirement derives from Otto von Bismarck and the Prussian Army – hardly relevant to a 21st century in which one in four babies born today will live to 100

• Sarah Harper reviews evidence that continued participation in the economy, community and culture is good for individuals and good for society.

One in three of us is now aged over 50. For the first time in our history, there are more people over 65 in the UK than there are young people.

We have known for some time that falling birth rates and increasing life expectancy are creating an ageing society. But we are only gradually realising the extent of this challenge.

By the 2020s the number of older people relying on community care services will rise by nearly 40 per cent to more than two million. At the same time, the ratio of the working-age population to retired people will halve over the next 40 years. 

The more we understand older age as a series of transitions that can be prepared for – as the optimal agers do – the better chance we have as a society of developing the new services and products that will help more people become optimal agers.

Authors:
Geraldine Bedell and Rowena Young