In Canada, there is a group called “Seniors for Seniors” (http://seniors4seniors.ca) in which “junior seniors” age 60-65 can volunteer to assist “senior seniors” aged 85-90 as personal caregivers and drivers. That brings up the question of:
what exactly is a senior?
“Baby boomers” is the name for that abundance of children born between 1946 and 1964. The oldest of these are now over 65 (and the youngest are developing problems reading small type.)
Tony Vagneur, boomer and actual cowboy in Aspen, Colorado declares, “I don’t understand why there’s a dichotomy, separating ‘older people’ from the rest of the world? If it weren’t for older people (over 50, the largest marketing demographic), there wouldn’t be profitable demand for those products that claim to be youth-oriented.”
Of course, he’s a sharp, fit Colorado outdoorsman. It is ridiculous to put him in the same marketing category as a people old enough to be his parents. Yet, young engineers have a hard time imagining the needs of either baby boomers or the older silver generation who now live to be age 90 and beyond.
A Silver Field of Dreams
http://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/silver-field-dreams
Susan Estrada reports from the Silvers Summit, the senior tech segment of the 2012 CES (Computer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas (http://silverssummit.com). She quotes Marty Cooper, the engineer credited with inventing mobile phones, as saying that, although young designers long to tap into the senior market, “they can’t ‘think’ like an older adult.”
The National Council on Aging (NCOA) is a not-for-profit advocacy group for older Americans and the organizations that serve them. “Many adults over 55 need help paying for prescription drugs, health care, utilities, and other basic needs,” they write. And, “there are over 2,000 federal, state and private benefits programs available to help.” NCOA has created this online questionnaire to help seniors identify benefits that could help to cover the costs of everyday expenses.
The Internet Book of Life 