Baby Boomers

Fig. 7 Aging of baby boomers will dramatically increase population potentially at risk from cardiovascular disease (CYD).

Table 9.7 shows that there were 270 million Americans in 1998, and the number is increasing at a rate of 0.84% each year. The bulge of population of age 30-44 is known as the baby boomers, better shown in figure 9.4, as people born after the... 

Things have changed. Today, about a million Americans retire each year. This number will double as the 76 million Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) begin to retire. Retirement is the goal that most workers and small-business owners look forward to as an appropriate conclusion to their careers. 

Notwithstanding, sleep deprivation tends to have greater adverse effects on the older adult. With the exception of one protocol (40), all of these studies were limited to young adults, which creates potential inaccuracies when extrapolating to the youth soccer league or the aging baby boomer who runs marathons. Optimal performance is important to athletes of all ages and abilities. 

Parents who perceived little risk associated with marijuana had teens with similar attitudes. A recent NHSDA reports that teens are 9.6 times more likely to try marijuana if they have parents who would not be very upset if they tried it. Although some experts hypothesized that prior parental use of marijuana might influence teenagers, research has shown that baby-boomer parents (who grew up in a period of high marijuana use) did not account for the different rates of teenage marijuana use. 

Another age-based segment is that referred to as the baby boomers. The term refers specifically to the cohort of people bom between 1945 and 1966 (Muller Cleaver, 2000). The expression baby boomers applies best to the countries of Canada, the United States of America, Australia and New Zealand where economic conditions after the Second World War were sound and families were encouraged. By way of contrast, war-affected countries in Europe and Asia and developing countries in other continents did not produce the same conditions for family life and did not experience such high birth rates. Nevertheless European and Japanese travellers, in particular, share some of the characteristics outlined in North American and Australian studies (You O Leary, 1999). 

Muller, T.E. and Cleaver, M. (2000) Targeting the CANZUS baby boomer explorer and adventure segments. Journal of Vacation Marketing 6 (2), 154—169. 

Significant demographic shifts are taking place in the major markets. The baby boomers (those bom after World War II, between 1946 and 1964) are getting older, and their health care needs will be changing accordingly. 

For a while, from the spring of 1999 until the summer of 2001, Merck s Vioxx looked like another perfect drug. A chronic and widespread condition (osteoarthritis). A condition that tends to worsen with age (think of all those Baby Boomers hitting their fifties). A condition suffered by middle-class Americans with health insurance. A condition without any other prescription treatment (there were plenty of inex-... 

It is commonly heard today that 60 is the new 40, and, undoubtedly, many older persons would bristle to be considered disabled. Indeed, as the oldest baby boomers (those born in the mid-1940s) embrace healthy lifestyles and benefit from improved medical advances, there no longer is reason to consider every older person as actually or potentially disabled. However, the map to the fountain of youth as yet remains undiscovered. As our bodies and minds age, they increasingly fall to disabling conditions. About 55% of the nation s 10 million blind or visually impaired people are 65 years or older. By the time anyone reaches the age of 85, the chance that he or she will have a severe disability is nearly 50 %. There... 

The social and healthcare impact of these demographics in the United States and across the globe will lead to an increased demand for better medicines directed at a healthy old age. This elderly population have more income than average per capita income. In the United States, 70 million baby-boomers are starting to retire to a total of... 

In developed countries, by 2020, the working population aged 15-65 years will fall from 22% in 1996 to 16%. Those aged 65 years and over will increase to 20 from 16% (US Bureau of Census, 1996). In the United States, 60 years ago, the retirement age for Social Security pension was designed for an expected average lifespan of 65 years. Already this has been pushed back to 67 years by year 2004, and additional legislation will probably push the age requirements back to 70 in 10 years time, when the baby-boomers swell the retired population. 

Several factors, such as advances in technologies, growing consumerism, and demand of baby-boomer consumers to look and feel young, contribute to the popularity of lifestyle drugs. Consumers want not only the absence of disease but also improvement of quality of life. Longer lifespans also give rise to a variety cf cosmetic and performance conditions that demand remedies. 

No matter what the future of Rx-to-OTC switch will be, one thing for sure is that future switches will be driven by science and an evidence-based medicine approach as in the past. Even though most of the OTC products are for acute use, there are already a few products such as hair growth products and smoking cessation product for chronic use. The desire of the baby boomers to maintain their vigor and the desire of healthcare providers to control cost favors preventive OTC products, which will continue to challenge the chronic use barrier. The switch of these kinds of products will be enhanced by the advance of diagnostic products (324). 

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