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[Music] it's no secret that we now live much longer lives than ever before in 1900
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average life expectancy at Birth in the United States was 46 years as of 2022 it's 78 and it will reach 83 within two
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decades after accounting for the effect of the coronavirus pandemic Americans who have made it to age 60 can expect to
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live an average of another 23 years dramatically up from just 10 years in 1900. that's another lifetime within a
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lifetime Western Europeans are even better off with a life expectancy at age 60 of 25 years Asians can enjoy 20
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additional years on average and even in Africa where much progress can be made the number is already a stunning 16
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years in addition to Greater longevity we stay in much better physical and mental shape for much longer the
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so-called Health span this simply means that a 70 year old nowadays can pursue the active lifestyle of a 60 year old
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from two generations ago welcome to the ripple effect the podcast that takes you on a journey through the
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minds of work and faculty I'm your host Dan Loney and in each episode we'll be
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diving deep into the inspiration behind the groundbreaking research that Wharton
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professors have conducted and exploring how their findings resonate with the world today we'll be covering a diverse
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range of topics bringing you the latest insights and knowledge that you can apply to your life into work so get
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ready to dive into new ideas with the ripple effect foreign great to be joined here in Studio by
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Wharton's Morrow Guillen Morrow great to see you again thank you for inviting me
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then so the new book you have written is titled the perennials uh the mega Trends
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creating a post-generational society give us a little bit of the back story as to why you wrote this book I wrote
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this book because the world is changing very fast specifically in two ways we're
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living longer and we're staying healthy for a longer period of time and that
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kind of upsets the way in which we've traditionally thought about living Our
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Lives which was to go from one stage to another so first we play then we learn then we work and then finally we retire
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that is now an old model that is falling apart and the second very important trend is technology technological change
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is actually enabling us to do certain things that before we wouldn't imagine
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doing at different ages there's an element that you bring in this book also that talks about the generational labels
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that we've kind of added into our culture over the last couple of decades uh and you say that we're going to kind
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of move away from those from those those labels in the future what do you why do
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you think that's going to happen well we have to move away from generational
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thinking because there are stereotypes for the most part I mean Generations are very diverse and also the differences
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that we attribute to different Generations are actually not real they're most of the time they're fussy
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Concepts and as you know this hasn't been informing for the longest time marketing advertising the way with our
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lives also learning and it's about time that we actually started to think about
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individuals and their worth and their values and their aspirations as individuals as opposed to labeling them
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part of a generation and then attributing to them certain yearnings and certain goals in life so then have
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those labels maybe not intentionally had some negative impacts along the way as well oh absolutely and people as soon as
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they get labeled let's say as Millennials or whatever they revolt against that because again that is kind
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of negating their individuality how come everybody who is a millennial behaves in
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the same way that's not true right there's a very big difference in New York City who attends college on a
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millennial in Iowa who you know works on a small farm they are in completely two
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different worlds and their behavior I can tell you is very different as well how do we then move away from those
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labels because it would seemingly be quite the challenge to do that especially since they've become kind of
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ingrained in our society well because as human beings we have this tendency to categorize and then to generalize about
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those categories and this is just a human tendency which can be very very misleading if not destructive so we need
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to work very hard at essentially recognizing people's individuality and being a little bit you know sharper
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about how we make decisions in the world not necessarily driven by generational membership part of this is also the fact
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that just our culture has changed so much uh in the last couple of decades when you think about what the family was
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say 30 40 years ago compared to what it is these days oh absolutely for example here in the United States the nuclear
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family was 40 of all households the to parents and you know most of the time at least one kid maybe two a refrigerator a
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garage a TV and a dog right that was a nuclear and a pink fence around the outside that was a nuclear family but
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nowadays it's only 18 of all households in America that are nuclear families
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defined that way you talk a little bit in the book about uh about the element of retirement and how the concept of
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retirement plays into uh and and that level of Health that we have how those two kind of play into the into these uh
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into this path we're headed into oh no absolutely I think uh you know more and
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more people are realizing that retirement uh has been oversold in other words that there are many good things
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about retirement but also really bad things you get disconnected you get bored uh you get isolated you get lonely
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and there's always something that we can do either for pay or not for pay even
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when we are in our late 60s or early 70s and here's the most important I think
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one of the most important messages in the book which is that we used to say that the future belongs to people in the
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20s to the young right I actually make the opposite argument in this book The Future belongs to people about the age
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of 60 which is counter-intuitive but uh this is becoming very quickly the largest age group in America and in
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other countries around the world and it's going to be the largest consumer segment and I remember they're also
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staying and working so they're also really important in the uh in in companies and other types of
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organizations so the future belongs to people above the age 60 so then we are in luck well I'm getting close there me
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too we're going to be there in a couple years so then what then how do you categorize a perennial so a perennial is
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somebody who doesn't think or act their age so it's people who essentially
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refuse to comply with age stereotypes so meaning for example people who decide well I can learn at any age not only
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when I'm young or I can work at any age or I can do this or that at any age without having to conform with uh you
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know the kinds of norms or stereotypes that tradition has uh you know told us that we should we should follow and that
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this is really important because I think it opens up a universe of new possibilities and opportunities for
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people and that's obviously I think where the technology comes back and ties
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in is because technology has just opened so many more doors to us for people at all ages these days absolutely so
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actually technology has both a negative and a positive effect the negative effect is that as you know people in
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their 40s in their 50s they're being displaced by technology right and so they find it very hard to find their
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footing and to switch to something else but at the same time technology also helps with that for example with online
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learning which is becoming so important in the world because is so much easier for somebody in his or her 40s or 50s to
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actually learn via technology than having to move to another city and attend school and move into the dorm
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right yeah so technology has both effects at negative one but also a positive and enabling one is part of the
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goal then to also try and drive more of a Level Playing Field for everybody when
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you're thinking about the impacts that that people in their 60s 50s and 60s feel and also in their 20s as well
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absolutely uh I think the perennial Society is one in which opportunities are more widely available to more people
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because remember I mean under the old system if you missed a transition let's
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say from being a teenager to being an adult if you miss a transition in terms of for example missing out on a
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promotion opportunity you were kind of uh you know left behind right so I think a new perennial economy I think is one
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in which uh no matter what you do you don't have to actually comply with these
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timings with uh each of these transitions at very specific moments in your life and a lot of people actually
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fall uh you know through the sideways here and they don't they cannot Advance
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right so I think this new way of thinking about the economy thinking about jobs thinking about everything
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will help people who for whatever reason uh you know don't get ahead in life at
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the moment they're supposed to according to the old way of doing things we're
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talking with uh Wharton's morrigian who's the author of the book coming out
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on August 22nd the perennials the mega Trends creating a post-generational society so people can pre-order it right
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now how then does this mindset around perennials potentially impact things like policy like culture like
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organization well culturally of course I think to the extent that we have more and more people following up at any way
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of life it's going to change everything right so we see for example uh now workers who are grandparents asking for
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grandparent leave because they want to spend time with their grandchildren right so so this is just something that
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was unimaginable like 20 years ago right and companies are having to to adjust but I think the biggest uh I think
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effect will be on policy making so we need a loss and we need regulations to get updated to recognize that uh you
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know age is not a determinant as it used to be that now we live longer and we stay
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healthier longer and therefore some of the assumptions that we were making about what is age appropriate and what
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is not uh have have to be abandoned do some of the changes that are kind of going on now in our culture around some
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of these areas especially coming out of the pandemic do they play into this this
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at least the understanding more so about the need for policy change oh absolutely
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I think the pandemic was this a huge uh event but also a policy experiment because we introduced both companies and
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governments new measures to tackle the pandemic but measures that even after the pandemic are going to have a
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long-term impact like for example remote work and remote learning so I think uh the uh the pandemic was what they said
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was a before and after kind of moment and things got accelerated and especially I think this transition
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towards what I call the post-generational or The Perennial Society was accelerated by the pandemic
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we've talked a lot in the past about Innovation and you talk about that as well in the scope of all of these
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changes going on and how that's going to impact Innovation as well oh absolutely
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because just to give you an example uh the workplace is becoming so much more intergenerational or multi-generational
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with people of very different ages working side by side and we know from research for example research conducted
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here at the Wharton School that more diverse teams are more Innovative more creative and more productive and uh so
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far we have been thinking about that diversity at the team level in terms of gender or in terms of ethnicity
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or background in general but now I think we also need to start thinking about it
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in terms of age so age diversity is also conducive to more creativity productivity and Innovation our business
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is ready to accept a lot of these changes as well not really because still what we see is that companies especially
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larger companies continue to discriminate against both young and all workers depending on what the
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issue is at stake right they tend to uh attribute certain types of behavior to young people versus old people and I
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think those kinds of assumptions need to also be abandoned are we starting though
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to see maybe small elements of some of these changes taking place at this point and and you know at some point we'll get
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to you know more larger adoption of a lot of these Concepts oh no absolutely so uh the number of companies that are
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thinking about uh promoting a multi-generational workshop administrative workplace is growing by
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Leaps and Bounds starting from a very low level of course we're also seeing that more and more people about the age
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of 30 are attending school most of them virtually so in the United States more than 30 of the population right now is
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attending some kind of learning program online so that's a big change and we're
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also seeing for example the the rise of multi-generational households so it's
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still below 10 uh but that's that's the start we have a long road ahead of us so
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for with that idea specific typically is that going to be more broad-based than multi-generational family do you think
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because I I think to a degree it has been kind of culturally set in certain segments and not more broad-based well
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sure uh a lot to do with immigration and with uh cultures immigrant cultures where the extended family plays a very
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important role but now we're seeing more and more families from the mainstream
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actually thinking that maybe a multi-generational household where you have more than two generations living
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together it's actually a great Arrangement that some researchers at Columbia University have uh you know
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found that actually leads to Better Health outcomes even including mental and physical health so I think this is
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also growing and don't think about multinational households as poor households in fact the poverty rate
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among multi-generational households is only half as as high as the poverty rate for the overall American population and
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the average income of a multidential household is 120 000 which is way above the median income for the United States
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which is like Fifty or sixty thousand dollars so there's an increasing number
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of multidentional households that have you know chosen this arrangement uh you know not uh for economic reasons
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but uh because they wanted to uh you know experiment with this new way of life how much do you see this really
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kind of enveloping kind of a Global Perspective and having this play out in in all in countries around the world oh
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this is going on in many countries around the world is going on in Europe it's going on in Japan it's going on in
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China it's going on in in many different parts of the world it's not just the
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United States so then does the public then even have a a greater voice in the say with a lot of
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these changes that are going on the policy kind of the corporate structure because perennials will be relied on
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more do you think well absolutely I think uh you know this perennial way of life What I Call The Perennial way of
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life it's just something that gives all of us more opportunities at different
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points in time than our lifetimes so I think this is something that will Empower all of us again it's kind of
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removing uh like handcuffs or a chain that we used to uh you know have uh you know essentially constraining Us in
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terms of what we could do I think that is in the end the effect of this what do you think is is the takeaway for
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people when they when they read the book The Big takeaway I think is uh you don't
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have to organize your life in terms of your age there are constraints of course we do get old and we lose certain kinds
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of abilities as we grow older uh but I think that age is not the determining factor that the sky is the limit that
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you can do all sorts of things at different ages and by the way we've also seen that in entrepreneurship how many
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entrepreneurs uh you know do we have in the United States who are below the age of 20 they're teenagers right that isn't
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that didn't used to be the case 20 or 30 or 40 years ago entrepreneurs were a
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little bit older than that and by the way at companies now what we have is a lot of people reporting to a boss Who is
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younger that also wasn't the case at IBM let's say which was the quintessential
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American corporation in the 1950s right does it change then the mindset around the older generational worker coming
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back and and providing insight and and impact on the company longer term absolutely absolutely and what we're
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seeing in the workplace is increasingly this inverse mentoring or reverse mentoring so younger workers also
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mentoring older workers and of course all the work is contributing to the development of younger workers as well
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so once again uh the the effect at the end is to eliminate age as a primary determinant of all of these social
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relationships at work tomorrow it's a great book thank you very much for coming in greatly appreciate the time
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today thank you for inviting me then you got it morogie and Wharton Professor who
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is author of the upcoming book The perennials the mega Trends creating a post-generational society it is out on
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August the 22nd and it is available for pre-order currently thank you for listening to the ripple
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effect we hope you found this episode informative and engaging don't forget to
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