Don't underestimate the baby boomer volunteers

However, there are still widely held negative assumptions and stereotypical attitudes towards older Australians. For example, in April 2005, the Productivity Commission released a report, Economic Implications of an Ageing Australia, to examine the labour supply, productivity and fiscal implications of Australia’s ageing population trends over the next 40 years. The report found that the “profound ageing” of Australia would reduce economic growth at the same time as intensifying demands for public services, such as health, aged care and the aged pension.

In other words, older Australians would seriously imbalance the economy and suck the country dry. This population imbalance, the report concluded, could not be made up through immigration or fertility increases. The report was based purely on economic terms and economic indices - it was all about measuring and predicting Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the future “burden” of ageing. But it hit a nerve and the media, politicians, and commentators were all breast beating over the “ageing” problem in a particularly negative way.

The Productivity Commission’s extensive 300-plus page report devoted only three pages to volunteering, and basically said that volunteering would not make any difference, presumably because volunteering is not part of the GDP. If volunteer work were included as part of the GDP, given a dollar value and placed within national accounts, the contribution of ageing Australians would be seen very differently.

The most recent ABS Voluntary Work report from 2007 indicates a drop in the volunteer rate of 55 to 64-year-olds (the older baby boomers) between 2002 and 2006. Although women only dropped marginally (from 39.5 per cent to 38.2 per cent) men’s participation fell from 36.5 per cent to 29 per cent. The younger boomers (45-54 age group) were stable at 40 per cent (still busy with children a large focus of volunteering).

Volunteering will be an important component of the baby boomers’ retirement and our society will benefit from their unpaid labour. But there is some work to do in order to get the most out of it, in terms of visibility and value.