7 things Harvard housing researchers can tell you about older adults

Forecasters at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies are trying to help land use planners, real estate developers, architects and builders understand what older Americans are like now, what they’ll be like decades from now, and how the demographic shift will change U.S. housing.

Their new report, Housing America’s Older Adults, could shape federal, state and local housing policy for generations to come.

The Harvard forecasters have delivered a real-estate-oriented version of the message agents and brokers have been trying to get out for generations. 

“With the aging of the large baby-boom generation and increased longevity, the 50-and-over population is projected to increase about 20 percent by 2030, to 132 million,” the forecasters say. “In just 15 years, one in five people will be at least aged 65.”

Helping those people have “high-quality, independent and financial secure lives has thus taken on new urgency not only for individuals and their families,” the forecasters say, “but also for the nation as a whole.”

The report — and the Excel spreadsheet tables in its appendix — could be a useful data resource for agents and brokers who are trying to help clients analyze and meet post-retirement health care needs, whether through products such as Medicare supplement insurance, long-term care insurance (LTCI), or life or annuity products that offer benefits linked to long-term care (LTC) needs.

The report also includes some data on the current housing needs of Americans who already have disabilities.

Here is a sampling of seven figures from the report that might be of interest to insurance producers.

1. The older adults of the United States are in better shape than they used to be.

The forecasters report, based on Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey data, that life expectancy has increased since 1991, general health has improved, and older people typically spend a shorter amount of time suffering from severe health problems.

The number of Medicare recipients who said they had difficulty with activities of daily living (ADLs) dropped 22 percent between 1991 and 2009.

The forecasters believe that drop represents a real drop, not just a statistical mirage, because the percentage of Medicare recipients who said they had moderate limitations, such as difficulty walking a quarter mile, fell just 3 percent over the same period.

2. Even relatively high-income adults might not have much in savings — or much in cash-value life insurance.

In 2010, U.S. residents ages 50 to 64 in the top quarter in terms of income had an average of just $220,000 in retirement accounts, $62,000 in stocks, $25,600 in cash savings, and $25,000 in life insurance cash value.

Just 33 percent had life insurance with cash value. The older high-income residents who did have cash-value life insurance probably had an average of only about $75,000 in cash value.

(AP Photo/Phil Coale)

3. The Great Recession hit older Americans’ in the financial gut.

For people ages 50 to 64 in the top quarter of income, inflation-adjusted home equity fell to $203,000 in 2010, from $231,538 in 2007. Non-housing wealth rose to $497,000, from $466,166 in 2007.