Boomer Housing Preferences: Active Adult Lifestyle Communities versus Aging in Place

Abstract

Population aging is a feature of many developed countries due to higher life expectancy and a collapse in birth rates following the post-war baby boom (Fishman 2010). The vanguard generation of this demographic shift are the ‘baby boomers’ – people born between 1946 and 1965 in the so-called post-World War II baby boom. In Australia baby boomers make up a significant proportion of the population and the effects of the aging of this cohort are increasingly the focus of housing scholarship. Between 1993-2013 the proportion of Australia’s population over 65-years increased from 2.8 per cent to 14.4 per cent (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2013). Furthermore, the over 65-years cohort is projected to increase to 25 per cent of the population by 2056 (ABS 2013). The aging population presents a number of challenges in Australia: a reduction in the workforce; an increase in welfare/pension dependence; a change in consumer and lifestyle patterns; and most significantly for this book, the provision of housing.