Old people, and those who will grow old,
In the future, there will be more consumption "spare power".
preface:
In the rapidly changing elderly market, there are still too many needs that have not yet been released that are difficult to capture with data.
Sociology has been an important research perspective for AgeClub in past business analyses. Understanding the background of the times and the historical changes experienced by the elderly group can help us more deeply understand the driving force of their social, entertainment and consumption, and predict the future possibilities before the market breaks out.
The speed of aging is accelerating, the post-50s and post-60s have gradually become the main body of elderly consumption, and in the next decade, the post-70s will also become the main force of the "new elderly".
Today's elderly people are more and more willing to spend money for themselves, what is the reason behind it? Taking a long-term view, can the elderly market after the influx of "new elderly people" burst into new potential?
With the above questions in mind, AgeClub interviewed Meng Qingyan, associate professor at the School of Sociology of China University of Political Science and Law and a scholar at Daguan. He is a rookie in the study of modern history in China, conducting a series of studies around the social transformation of modern China. As a young scholar of the post-80s generation, he has a keen insight into the emerging trends in modern society. In the context of aging, the consumption behavior of the elders after retirement has triggered his thinking.
Meng Qingyan, associate professor and Daguan scholar at the School of Sociology of China University of Political Science and Law
01
The elderly have more consumption than the young people "spare energy"
1. AgeClub: Now young people are regarded as the main body of consumption, although the elderly have a large increase, but it is considered that the consumption power is not strong, the young market has received much more attention than the elderly market, what do you think of this phenomenon?
Meng Qingyan: If you look at the current volume, the consumption power of the elderly is certainly not as good as that of young people, but the speed of aging in this world is accelerating, the limits of the elderly are lengthening, and the average life expectancy of people is significantly improving.
In the past, old age accounted for only a small part of life, and now old age may constitute a 1/3 process of life. From the time you retire to your eighties or nineties, you may be in a state of old age for 30 years. With the rise of the overall medical level, the elderly now have more energy and better physical condition, and have more leisure to deal with the 30 years after their retirement.
In the long run, it may be that the older generation of people are still old, and the new generation of people will enter the old age, which is a process of continuous accumulation, and the more they accumulate, the more they will become, becoming an inevitable trend.
The reason why their current consumption power and volume are not reflected is not because they have no money, but the post-40s to post-60s generation has a very strong concept of savings, they always dare not spend money like young people regardless of tomorrow, but once the "Pandora's Box" is opened, their desire to consume will be very strong.
For example, when traveling, many elderly people would rather take the bus, subway than take a taxi, eat and live is also very provincial, but in the scenic spots to see certified souvenirs, jewelry and jade that can preserve value, they are very willing to spend money.
Now that young people have a large consumption volume and are considered to be the main body of consumption, there are emerging consumption patterns such as blind boxes, and the consumption volume of the elderly cannot keep up for the time being. However, with the decline of the birth rate of the population and the increasing pressure in the workplace, the burden on young people is becoming heavier and heavier, and the proportion of consumer subjects will gradually shift to the elderly group over time.
Within the predictable range, it is more important to look forward to which generation has the "spare power" of consumption, and the current elderly and those who are about to grow old have "spare energy", compared with the future young people may not have any "spare energy".
Older people are slow to accept new things, but after they accept it, the attachment is very high. With the development of various information technologies and media technologies, the elderly have more leisure to learn and accept. Whether in terms of consumption or vitality, the future may not be the world of young people, but the world of the elderly.
2. AgeClub: Older adults seem to be more willing to spend money on younger generations than on themselves. Is this perception of consumption likely to change in the future?
Meng Qingyan: Even now, when young people are regarded as the main consumers, it does not mean who spends the money in the name of whom.
At present, many elderly people have participated in the consumption of young people. If we do a national survey, we may find that half of the money for the grandchildren's training courses is paid by the elderly. This consumption cannot be calculated by who pays, but by the whole family.
Many elderly people will tell their children that you two are tired enough to buy a house and pay a mortgage, we are both retiring, there are few places to spend money, and I pay for what classes your grandchildren take. These consumptions are all spent by the elderly, and more and more similar situations may occur in the future.
Taking buying a house as an example, the proportion of young people who have just entered the workplace and really buy a house with their own salary is very low, and most of them need to rely on the support of parents on both sides. My parents still call me and ask me, if you have financial pressure to talk, I don't need that much money with your mother. I'm sure this is not an isolated case, most people have had similar experiences.
If we look at the future trend, the elderly will be more and more willing to spend money on themselves, and they hope that when their children become adults, they will try not to pay for themselves, and their own money will be left for their own consumption. As parents, they will also invest their savings in the younger generation, but this part of the weight will be squeezed, and the money that the elderly spend on themselves will increase.
We compare old age to sunset, the most beautiful is sunset red, but from the perspective of the whole consumption state, if we consider it in the long term, I think it may be a sunrise industry, and everything has just begun.
02
New old people pay more attention to "my life"
3. AgeClub: From an intergenerational point of view, what are the characteristics of the growth environment and life concept of the elderly?
Meng Qingyan: Now the post-40s to post-60s are the main elderly group, and their growth environment is different, but in general, they have experienced a period of young struggle.
Like my parents are post-50s, this generation has experienced poor days, most of them have enjoyed the dividends of reform, and have also experienced the nine-to-five from working class. In terms of life, they have experienced stages of old age and small age, and they are more attached to the traditional concept of family and filial piety.
When this group of elderly people relaxes, there will be a total outbreak: I have already contributed to the country, I have also contributed to my children, and the time that follows is finally my own time. I'm going to start enjoying the leisure of retirement, and I'm going to get back the time I lost.
For example, my parents have been playing around in the past year, and have gone to Hainan, Jiangnan, and Yunnan. I watched their itinerary, and the free trip played with the feeling of group travel, just like pulling exercises, and I asked my dad if you are not tired.
He said, since you went to college, your grandmother is not in good health, in order to take care of the elderly I have not been out of Tianjin for 10 years, before I did not retire when I always traveled on business, I want to find the lost time.
My dad told me two days ago that when the epidemic stabilized, I would go to Xinjiang. I said that Xinjiang was very tired, and then my father replied to me: "I tell you, while I can still go out, I must go out." One day I couldn't walk the road, I couldn't go out if I wanted to, and I couldn't find the 10 years I lost. ”
I think that's the general mindset of older people these days. But if we say, when we are in our 70s, 80s, and 90s, will this be the case? I think so, because we always feel like we have to get back the lost 10 years.
Frankly speaking, today's workplace environment is no longer the workplace environment of the past, and it is more competitive than in the past. Young people like to use words like "lying flat" and "inner volume", no matter what kind of work they do, the daily schedule is full. When young people have the day of retirement, they will definitely want to find the lost 10 years, because that is not my decade, but the decade of my "part-time work", and I must find my time after retirement. This is the foreseeable future.
4. AgeClub: Compared with the elderly in the past, what are the changes in the concept of the "new elderly" who have just entered retirement, and what are the reasons behind it?
Meng Qingyan: Our grandfather's generation, they don't have the so-called "my time", their time is based on others, not living for themselves, either for careers or for their families, these are not "my time".
But from the post-50s and post-60s, there have been slow changes, there is a very clear concept of "my time" and "my life", and the decisions they make are not necessarily related to others, but I have to do something.
Now the university for the elderly is very popular, the idea of the old people signing up is that I have to learn all kinds of things, which I wanted to learn when I was young, but never realized, and I now have time to try to achieve it. It's not so much a change in perception as the four words "my life" begin to appear, and there is a clearer individual-centered boundary.
People born in the 50s were educated in collectivism, with a greater emphasis on giving, and in some ways more thoughtful about others than today's young people. But they also experienced reform and opening up, in 1978, the eldest post-50s were just 28 years old, still in a very easy to accept new things, new ideas into their vision.
The so-called conceptual new things, that is, "my life", "my hobbies", "my wishes", "my interests", these are all outside of "my dedication", so they have different views from the older generation.
In fact, everyone is a "remnant of the times", not only living in the atmosphere of this era, but also catching up with this change at the age when it is most likely to accept change, and being able to understand it rationally, the more so, the deeper the imprint of the times on you.
This is also why I think that there is not much difference between the post-70s and the post-80s, because the post-70s and post-80s adolescents both grew up in the historical stage after the reform, and in the period from the 80s to the 90s, more and more people began to realize that change happened.
03
Social mobility forces the elderly to become independent
Social needs lead to more commercial space
5. AgeClub: Parents of the first generation of only children have entered old age, what changes have occurred in the lifestyle of the new elderly in the context of the miniaturization of the family structure?
Meng Qingyan: Before discussing the changes brought about by the only child, we need to pay attention to the changes in social mobility after the reform and opening up.
In state-owned enterprises before the reform and opening up, workers retired, at least one child could come to take over, and there was basically no mobility. But today is different, and the whole society is particularly mobile.
The state of young people in the city is basically two, one is to live in a different city from their parents, and the other is to be in the same city, but there will be many more subtle situations. For example, the old man moves to a new city because of his children, but you will find that they always have to go back, and he often has to go back to his hometown, which is a change in mobility.
The enhancement of mobility and the separation of space are becoming more and more likely to subtly affect the boundaries between children and parents, as well as the sense of boundaries.
In the past, the sense of boundaries of the elderly was not so clear, but from the generation of our parents, the sense of boundaries has become clearer and clearer, and my father sometimes makes some decisions and will say, "I don't care about your business, and you don't care about my business."
Our fathers and grandparents rarely talk like this, but in our generation, due to changes in real society, changes in space, and changes in communication methods, everyone has placed more and more emphasis on the sense of boundary.
If you look at Western society, the intergenerational structure of the West is like bricks, and the boundaries of each brick are very clear. China's traditional society is like a concrete wall, wrapped together without distinction between you and me. This is a significant difference between Chinese and Western societies.
In general, our differences with the West will be narrowed, because a typical feature of modernity is to make the relationship between people simple and equal, and the so-called equality is to remove so many ethical relations from us and become a modern relationship between people, including our relationship with our parents, which is a general trend.
We are also taking this road, but we have the background and roots of Chinese culture, and it will not become exactly like that, but it will converge.
In addition to the changes in social mobility, we must also see an unintended consequence of the one-child policy, that is, the one-child generation lacks the opportunity to grow up with siblings, with more emphasis on living for themselves, and it is difficult to leave a place for others in their own living world.
This state, in turn, will inevitably force the independence of the elderly.
It is not that today's young people are not filial piety, but under the pressure of life, work, and distance, there is very little time to really help their parents and accompany their parents, and they may feel indebted psychologically, but many problems in reality cannot be solved, which is actually more cruel.
The position left to the parents in the hearts of the only child generation is less than the position left by our parents to the grandparents, and in turn, these elderly people will be forced to be independent and solve problems by themselves, because the children are too far away to quench the near thirst. Although there are differences between cities, the mentality of the elderly in cities is now more similar.
In the countryside, this trend is likely to come slowly for the relatively low-income elderly who remain behind. What cannot be ignored is that although there is still a gap between urban and rural areas today, the time and space barrier has been greatly weakened.
The comparison of the gap between urban and rural areas needs to be looked at in the span of several decades, which is where the trend of historical development lies. In the past 50 years, whether it is technical conditions, working conditions, infrastructure, lifestyle, the overall time and space gap between urban and rural areas has slowly become smaller.
Today, even in the mountainous areas far away from us, the youth, middle-aged and elderly people in the town may also be brushing vibrato, kuaishou, shopping Taobao, Jingdong, and Pinduoduo. From the perspective of the Internet, the difference between urban and rural areas is already very small.
6. AgeClub: Why are Pinduoduo and square dance so popular with the elderly?
Meng Qingyan: Pinduoduo's ability to be accepted by middle-aged and elderly people is related to this intergenerational life experience.
Before teaching my parents to use smart phones, they asked me what shopping APP I should use, I helped them download Taobao and JD.com, and when they came home after a while, they found that they had downloaded Pinduoduo by themselves.
Our parents' generation went through the process from a society of acquaintances to a society of strangers. Like the unit compound where I lived when I was a child, the neighbors of the family home were all colleagues of my parents, and the children in the kindergarten were also the children of my parents' colleagues. After undergoing the reform of the commodification of housing, the living environment of parents became a community of strangers, and the neighbors did not know who they were.
Sometimes when I go back to Tianjin with my mother, I am particularly unaccustomed. My mom loves to talk to people, even if she sees acquaintances in the elevator. And our generation doesn't talk, and people we know can at most nod. They are still accustomed to the social way of acquaintance society, but it is difficult to achieve in today's urban life.
When the elderly are filled with other elements of their lives, they do not feel lonely, such as bringing children for their children and cooking for their children who come home every day to eat, and they do not feel so strong about loneliness. But if they live far away from their children and don't know each other's neighbors, they will miss the warmth of the old acquaintance society.
Although there are many bad things in the acquaintance society, everyone is always nostalgic, especially nostalgic for the warmth of the past. There are a lot of TV dramas that revisit the sixties and seventies now, and I will also think back to the era I experienced when I was a child.
Today's elderly people have experienced that era and have deeply felt that warmth, so there is still a social appeal.
So Pinduoduo's "slash a knife" was accepted by them and became a new way of socializing. In the logic of young people, they may only help friends to "cut a knife", and the elderly use "slash a knife" as a social entry point, in this way to make strangers become acquaintances.
Young people gather in Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya's live broadcast room to watch them bring goods, but they will not become friends because of watching live broadcasts. The use of Pinduoduo by the elderly is another logic, Pinduoduo provides opportunities and space for the elderly to socialize, and buying things is only part of it.
Square dancing has a similar effect, generally appearing in the center of the place of residence, where participants live nearby. In a modern city like a cement forest, everyone does not know each other, and by dancing square dance together, they slowly meet new friends and meet social needs.
By observing the square dance crowd around you, I found that square dance is also a consumer industry, when you become the lead dancer and start to teach others to dance, especially when you participate in square dance competitions, a series of consumer goods such as clothing and dancing shoes appear. Square dancing does serve as a social connection in the stranger's world.
When we are young, we may not experience the needs of social interaction, but when we are old, the needs in this regard will slowly appear, because loneliness is an eternal problem of modern people.
The older people get, the more they feel lonely, and the social fear mentality of their youth will disappear. Now you don't want to deal with others, and when you get old, you may find that you can't keep up with the times, and you especially hope that others will care about you, and you don't want to be left behind in the corner of the times.
7. AgeClub: When the post-70s generation begins to enter the elderly, what changes will occur in the elderly market?
Meng Qingyan: When discussing the consumer market, we should not only think about the current group of elderly people, but also consider what will happen to the huge elderly group after the retirement of the post-70s, post-80s and post-90s.
We are more familiar with electronic products, e-commerce, and new consumption patterns than the previous generation, and online shopping has become our consumption habit. Many people feel very uncomfortable every day without brushing Taobao and watching live broadcasts, and our parents are very difficult to learn these shopping software, and they feel that it is not as easy as going directly to the supermarket.
These new things, based on the internet and smart devices, are not a barrier for us at all. We also don't treat ourselves badly when we travel like our parents did, and we spend more on food and housing. Pension apartments are not rejected by us, and socialized pensions have become our active choice.
When the general volume of people with modern life rhythm and modern consumption concepts is old, as long as the overall economic level does not fluctuate particularly largely, the consumption volume from the elderly population may increase by a large margin on the whole, and the era of belonging to the elderly will really come, which is a foreseeable trend.
Some people say that the elderly are crazy now, but don't worry, there will be more crazy elderly consumer groups in the future.
-END-
Author/Liu Yinuo