Action plan for Rural Development Group to more fully utilizes the latent economic market potential of seniors in the rural areas.

Gabriella Parkes – Harper-Adams

• Rising population, as more people move from the cities to the countryside than the other way.

• Exodus of young better qualified to cities where job prospects are better and more abundant.

• Fewer children, smaller family sizes

• People are living longer and hence there are more over 80s in the population as a whole and hence as more elderly are living in the rural areas it follows that there will be more of the over 80 age group in the rural areas.

• In-migration of wealthy, middle aged or elderly professionals retiring to a place in the country for perceived life style benefits. These tend to be better educated and have higher household income than longer-term residents.

• Similar in-migration of professionals with young families to rural areas for perceived life style improvements connected with bringing up children.

• Immigration of older professionals returning to their home communities.

Consequently it makes good sense to more fully utilize the economic potential of these wealthy and skilled members of the rural economy.

Having searched for policies applied by government or non government groups in the USA, Europe or the UK, to activate the senior population of rural communities there do not seem to have been many steps taken to do so. Although all policy makers are aware of the demographic factors listed above. The same can be seen to apply to the advertising and marketing industry, as they recognize and even have names for the older consumer base: gray market, mature market, silver surfers… yet if we think about adverts and marketing in general it is stuck in the rut of youth culture. This is a declining market in terms of numbers and not a group with as much disposable income as the older consumers, the youth spending is only maintained by the frantic efforts of credit providers

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Before I propose some actions that might assist the REPDG it might be helpful to break this analysis into two sections. You seem to want to better utilize the senior rural population in two ways, as consumers, who are not being fully serviced by local businesses, and as producers/ workers who having retired represent a large pool of experience and talent that is lying unused.

The Senior work force

Having compared participation rates of the over 50s in the various regions of the UK the West Midlands is one of the better performers; however the reasons for this are not clear. The ILO has produced an analysis of retirement age and expected duration of retirement in OECD countries which looks like this

It is evident that retirement ages have fallen markedly while at the same time life span has risen. This trend must be reversed if the state is to continue to provide pensions and the working population is not to be overwhelmed by the burden of supporting the increasing number of retirees.

If I first consider the retirees as an untapped work force, it might be useful to break them down into 5 sub groups as they are not a uniform cohort and represent different skill and experience and social capital value to local businesses. (John M Bryden of the University of Missouri.2003)

            (List 1)

• The indigenous poor elderly who lack resources in the form of employment related pensions, and who are more reliant on various transfer payments. These represent most of the rural retirees.

• The relatively well off indigenous elderly, who have sufficient resources to hire home help or pay for privately provided assisted living or nursing homes.

• The less well off return-migrant at or near retirement age returning to a family home, to be near relatives and family who will be similar in many respects to the first group.

• The better off return-migrant, who are in many ways similar to the second group.

• The incoming retiree migrants without local connections who are generally more educated and materially better off.

 It would seem that the fifth group offers the most skills, experience, contacts and know how for employers to utilize, and steps could be taken to recapture these workers.  However given that they are probably on good pensions they do not have the need to work to supplement their income as many other groups do, so it may be necessary to persuade them to re enter the world of work. Their re entry would most likely have to be on their own terms, as they are a group of people with considerable abilities, confidence and material wealth. They will probably be unwilling to work along traditional full time lines due to travel wishes and family commitments, for instance wanting to spend time with grand children who may live far away. So flexible working and part time positions would be more likely to lure such retirees from their retirement.

On the other hand less confident elderly or those who have not worked recently may be unaware of their skills and aptitudes and only through research will it be possible to discover the skills that are currently available but unused/ dormant in the retired population.

Many rural businesses are started by incoming older immigrants wanting to continue in work in their own enterprise and relocating or starting up in the rural location for a better life style, such incomers create employment in the locality and hence through the income multiplier enrich the rural area.

There are programs to support young rural entrepreneurs but it would be informative to find out what advice and funding is available to elder entrepreneurs, to encourage and assist them in continuing to operate beyond the statutory retirement age. Whether regional agencies could develop such programs or better channel available funding from schemes like the RES, or Leader + for instance.

 It would be helpful to conduct an audit of the rural retired population to find out what the mix of groups is in different rural areas, and more importantly what skills and experiences they have which could be utilised by West Midlands businesses and local government. Some sort of trawling process could be organized at suitable venues frequented by senior citizens. Or through organizations that communicate with them, for instance the Institute of Directors ran an appeal for non Executive directors, members of the IOD with the experience and knowledge were asked to apply to be put onto a register so that other members seeking advice and such services could refer to the register. I would suggest such a register in the West Midlands could be managed by Business Link, to put new or growing businesses in touch with members of the register for ongoing advice and support, a form of business mentoring.

 The mix of groups in the rural areas of the West Midland will vary and so will the demands of the local firms, the motivation to work needs to be identified. Some retirees will want to work for financial reasons, others to fill their time or out of a sense of philanthropy. The inducements to put time into paid work and voluntary work will differ and I have assumed that this brief refers to paid employment in the commercial sector, not the voluntary sector. It would seem some qualitative research is required to determine the pool of labour out there and also the attitudes of the different groups towards the work environment.

The obvious factors to lure / recapture the retirees into work are flexible working conditions, remuneration that they can enjoy, i.e. not deductible from their pension, home working if desired, and easy travel to work, recognition, status and respect. But the actual factors will have to be discovered through direct research. Possibly using retirees to conduct the survey as respondents will feel more able to expand their answers to someone who understands their point of view.  

Attitude: the attitudes of retirees towards employment will have been formed during their final few years in employment. This is therefore an area directly in the control of businesses in the WM. Many older workers will have retired from very overstretched public sector service providers and have little desire to re-enter work as they suspect it will be  similar to their final work experiences.  Research could try to gauge how such retirees with valuable experience such as health or social care experience, can be persuaded to remain in work longer, through adjustments to the working environment and work practices, hence  relieving  the shortages that  ruined their final experiences of working life.

The soon-to-retire population.

Other workers may be keen to enter retirement gradually and so a stepped retirement could be formulated, hence prolonging their working lives beyond the statutory retirement age. But it is essential that those nearing retirement age are  treated positively, Personnel departments must think long term and realize the value of the elderly worker, and accept the health and family pressures they are under. Many retired citizens could have continued in work beyond the statutory retirement age with more persuasive and diplomatic treatment by HRM departments and more flexible employment terms. Many retirees want to continue in employment but are unable to due to inflexible legislation on recruitment and retirement.

Businesses in the WM should examine their treatment of their soon-to-retire staff, and if a survey of HR practices is done then they can benchmark the best practices of companies which retain older workers beyond retirement and encourage participation successfully.

Also at the point of retirement the logging of skills and experience could be done and fed into a central database, for Business Link or what ever agency deals with the data.

Policy instruments.

The second pillar of the reformed Common Agricultural Policy is redirecting funding from market support to rural development, the England Rural Development Plan has been drawn up by Defra, and AWM has autonomy in applying the Plan and constructing their Regional Rural Development Plan, hence reference can be made to the rural development plans of other regions within the EU who have a better track record in the participation rate of elder citizens, such as Denmark, Portugal and Sweden.  Denmark has a senior policy to "ensure that elderly persons stay longer on the labour market and to reintegrate elderly unemployed persons on the labour market" they have policy initiatives that would be a useful source of benchmarking. Similarly in Sweden where there is a Rural Parliament which is one of the manifestations of the Swedish Village Action Movement.

Similarly the WMBC could look at the strategies being followed by other regions within the UK that have similar demographic profiles. For instance Scotland has a large proportion of rural areas and has a more extreme version of the demographic changes affecting all rural areas. The participation rates of senior citizens are an issue that the Scottish Assembly has considered and formulated policy statements on. Although many Scottish rural areas would be considered remote as opposed to West Midlands areas which are far more likely to be accessible rural areas, Scottish initiatives could be a good source of benchmarking opportunities.

Within the AWM region there are several organizations that it would be useful to consult with to work on co operative initiatives, for example the West Midlands Rural Network, the Leek Regeneration Scheme, and in the North West the Rural Skills Development Clubs.  

The Leader + program specifically targets older people, so funding may be accessible for small scale , innovative schemes that address local rural development issues in socially, environmentally and economically sustainable ways. Whether this scheme applies to the West Midlands needs to be researched as previous leader schemes were restricted to Objective 1 zones only.  

Age Concern have produced a National Skills Strategy and Delivery Report that emphasizes the importance of  lifting age barriers to education and the introduction of non traditional learning techniques. This would be usefully incorporated into policy developments.

The use of IT would seem to offer lifestyle improvements to the house bound and less mobile, but on the other hand it could increase isolation. The teaching and provision of IT is an area that needs to be considered by policy makers. Do we know what the household penetration of PCs is of the retired population? What are their levels of literacy? What provision for learning is there already and how can it be enhanced and reach even more retirees?

The elderly as consumers.

We could segment the senior consumers into 3 groups:

1.      50 – 64yrs who are the most economically powerful, and are making the transition between various stages in life. They lead active life styles and are generally healthy.

2.      65-74 year olds these are adjusting to retirement and other life events, they want to be active and independent as long as possible, but have concerns about the future.

3.      75+ year olds, less likely to have occupational pensions and preoccupied with declining health and mobility, and long term care issues. Their leisure activities are more sedate.

So it is clear that the 50-74+ age bracket is not a uniform whole, but made up of different segments whose desired consumption, recreational activities and ability to purchase are very different. These are consumers with the time to shop around and compare products; they have years of experience as consumers so know exactly what they want. Admap research found them to be demanding and selective, and respond best to communications based on value and benefit. They were also found to feel misrepresented by the media and the marketing industry.

The attitudes, incomes, lifestyle and health of the different groups affect their purchasing behaviour.  Any results from surveys of the older rural population could shed light on unsatisfied needs and wants. Certain increased needs are predictable, such as health care and housing needs, and age related products. There are reports by Carat Insight, Admap, Mintel which can shed some light on the purchasing behaviour of the segments of older consumers, but it would seem that the elderly respond best to well targeted marketing.

Hence WM   businesses could appraise their products and marketing on the basis of its focus on the older consumer and the image of the elderly they convey. The Scottish Parliament in their document Future of Senior Citizens: protection, participation, promotion, recognized the need to encourage a different image of retired and elderly people. Which is conveyed in the marketing messages of businesses trying to appeal to this age group?

For the 3^rd group above the process of purchasing needs to be made as easy as possible and businesses could consider their distribution processes, the growth of internet shopping is evidence that some businesses have been quite proactive in distributing their products in ways that are senior friendly. Any strategy that helps the less mobile shopper, purchaser  will be beneficial: home delivery, internet shopping, mail order, better public transport…Also for consumers on fixed incomes that are being eroded over time, payment terms can be a significant factor in the decision to purchase, observe the growth of the interest only mortgage. Again here a study of best practice in the region and further a field would seem the most logical measure. Those organizations that have successfully reached the elderly target market such as Saga, and Stenna have reaped the benefits.

But in addition to marketing their products, businesses in the WM must consider whether they are producing products and services that are suited to older customers and their different economic circumstances and physical factors, like weaker grip, poorer eye sight. Have they researched their markets, could WMBC conduct research on their behalf, covering a range of markets?