Stayin' Alive - How Canadian Baby Boomers Will Work, Play and Find Meaning in the Second Half of Their Adult Lives

As Canada's Baby Boomers prepare to enter the second half of their adult lives, leading pollster and analyst Michael Adams describes his generation's thoughts on topics ranging from retirement and spirituality to sexuality and funeral plans. This fun and insightful book draws on over twenty years of Environics social values data—including a special 2008 study that surveyed an extra-large sample of Boomers on issues specific to their current life stage.

“A thorough and revealing reflection on the values of the BabyBoom generation, with a surprise at its core: we're not as uniform a group as the hype contends, and our nostalgia goes back a lot farther than the 1960s." - Moses Znaimer, Founder of Zoomer Magazine + Media

The four social-values "tribes" Adams described in his bestselling book Sex in the Snow are alive and well: the Disengaged Darwinists, Connected Enthusiasts, Autonomous Rebels, and Anxious Communitarians continue to display distinct values and behaviours—and are evolving in fascinating ways as they age. Adams outlines each tribe's approach to retirement, health, technology, family, consumption, spirituality, and politics. His tribal segmentation analysis is an important corrective to analyses that treat Canada's largest generation (over 9-million men and women) as a monolith.

“Packed with laser-sharp ‘Aha!’ insights, this is required reading for everyone from marketers to NGOs and politicians. Stayin’ Alive drills deep into the mindset of Boomers and beyond – the generations that will profoundly shape our next few decades.”
– Jeannette Hanna, Trajectory’s VP, Strategy; co-author Ikonica, A Field Guide to Canada’s Brandscape

The trends and insights Adams finds in Environics' large bank of social values data will be invaluable to marketers, policy makers, human resource professionals and anyone else seeking to understand where Baby Boomers—and the rest of us—are headed in the years to come.

“As an ‘Autonomous Rebel,’ I appreciated the insight into all the Boomer tribes. This book is invaluable for anyone for whom the attitudes and behaviour of the Canadian Boomer generation is a significant factor.” - Alan C. Middleton, Schulich School of Business, York University

Visit Michael Adams website at: www.michaeladams.ca

Nurses to lead national strategy on aging and health

OTTAWA, August 23, 2010 /Canada NewsWire/ - The Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) is poised to take on a leadership role in developing a national strategy for aging and health as Canadians reveal they are increasingly worried about the future of their health-care system.

As part of its strategic direction to advance healthy public policy, CNA is committed to spearheading innovations that will assure the sustainability of medicare. An Ipsos-Reid survey commissioned by the Canadian Medical Association found that "80% are concerned the quality of health care in Canada will decline as a result of increased strain on the health care system as the Baby Boom Generation gets older" and requires more health-care services. At the same time, the survey goes on to say that "very few are willing to pay more taxes, pass the cost on to Baby Boomers or cut health promotion programs to fund the required changes."

"Although Canadians are bracing for higher out-of-pocket costs surrounding health care, this does not necessarily have to occur," said Rachel Bard, CNA's chief executive officer. "Proponents of two-tier health care have been continually fueling the notion that private insurance and user fees are the only answers. There are, in fact, other alternatives. Nurses and other health professionals have a responsibility to bring all the options to light and help Canadians decide what the future of health care should be."

CNA firmly believes that Canadians can - and should - address the issue of the changing health needs of an aging population within the framework of Medicare and the Canada Health Act. A well-planned, long-term aging and health strategy is a better answer than the customary call to move toward more privatization. Strategic investments made today in areas such as primary health and community care, health promotion and better management of chronic illness can yield important health system savings that would assure the sustainability of the health-care system and reduce the increasing burden being placed on the families of the elderly and their families.

There is also evidence to suggest that baby boomers are getting an unfair share of the blame for rising health-care budgets. A study released this month by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, for example, suggests that tax cuts have been eroding the government's ability to adequately fund health care.

"The time has come for us to look at the evidence and plan for the future. Canadians need to collectively decide how to best allocate the 151 billion dollars they spend on health care. Making the right choices will ensure that medicare will serve us well for generations to come," said Bard.

CNA is the national professional voice of registered nurses in Canada. It is a federation of 11 provincial and territorial nursing associations and colleges representing 139,893 registered nurses. CNA believes that the sustainability of a quality, publicly funded, not-for-profit health system rests upon a vibrant nursing workforce.

Boomers find creative ways to spend increasing down time

from the Newark Advocate
BY ABBEY ROY
Advocate Reporter
January 10, 2010

To date, Shirley Braunbeck, 63, has tracked roughly 8,500 people in the family tree belonging to her and her husband.

She took up genealogy research as a hobby around 15 years ago, said Braunbeck, of Newark, and has since discovered several things -- including a family member also researching the family tree, whom she learned lives in Heath.

"My kids don't care about it now ... but I think some day they're going to wonder what their grandparents and great-grandparents were like," Braunbeck said. "I think it's important to keep their memory alive."

As the baby boomer population ages -- some entering retirement, some continuing to work -- its members are seeking out different methods of spending their down time, ranging from the active to the nostalgic... read more at the Newark Advocate

"If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much." - Donald H. Rumsfeld