Alex Dalland
Australia’s ageing population is happy, healthy and couldn’t feel better. Or at least that’s what a new survey is telling us.
Recent results from Nestlé’s Choose Wellness Quiz show participants age 55 and older believe they are happier, healthier and more optimistic than millenials.
The Quiz looks at the general lifestyle of respondents, including diet, exercise, sleep and mental health before evaluating their results against the average ‘wellness’ of the Australian population – currently around 60 out of 100.
“From our results, we can see what while baby boomers appear to have the edge on millennials, there is room for improvement for all. By making small changes every day to consciously improve their wellbeing, all Australians can have a life-long positive impact on their emotional, physical and mental wellbeing, says Katrina Koutoulas, Head of Market Wellness, Nestlé Oceania.
A similar survey conducted in 2014 by Woolcott Research into the baby boomer demographic found similar results; when compared to other demographics, baby boomers are the healthiest and the happiest.
“They’re happier than young people, they’re more optimistic about the future. There’s a lot of rubbish stereotypes around older Australians, and those have been pretty much blown away,” Russell Tate, Head of Macquarie Radio Network – who commissioned the survey for their talkback radio stations – said in an interview with AdNews.
In the survey by Woolcott Research, 62 per cent of baby boomer respondents – those aged between 55 and 69 – said they were “generally optimistic about the future”; compared to 58 per cent of 45-69 year olds and just 49 per cent of 18-45 year olds.
Australia’s millenials have some hope for their future. Most of Nestlé’s respondents got more exercise (58 per cent exercising four or more times per week), slept better (62 per cent getting seven or eight hours of sleep) and felt like there is joy in their life (80 per cent of millenials versus 77 per cent of baby boomers).
When it comes to financial happiness, Generation Y are almost always regarded as less happy than their baby boomer parents, but this may be related to expectations that are more difficult to achieve than they imagined, according to the McCrindle Institute’s Research Director, Elaine Miles.
“Gen Y’s saw the miracle wealth accumulation that their Baby Boomer parents had, and expect to start their economic lives in the same way their parents are ending theirs.
“Now, there’s a realisation that all of the factors that set up the Baby Boomer generation probably won’t be on-side for Gen Y. They’ve dreamt of having it all – the house, the car, the annual overseas trips, the dining out … but the reality of what they’ve been handed is that one or perhaps more of those things need to go,” Miles says.
