Older Entrepreneurs an Untapped Force for Economic Stability

Entrepreneurs over 50 years of age offer significant “golden dividends” for economies wrestling with aging populations that place a disproportionate burden on resources—according to a new report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor

Newswise, April 3, 2017— The number of older adults who are self-employed outweighs that of young adults, suggesting that people of 50 years and older still have a significant role to play in economies around the world—this according to a new Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Special Report on Senior Entrepreneurship.

This new report, co-sponsored by Babson College, Universidad del Desarrollo, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak, and Korea Enterprise Foundation, draws on data collected between 2009 and 2016 on entrepreneurial activity in 104 countries.

The sample comprises 1,540,397 adults aged 18 to 80 years old across five regions of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Middle East and North Africa (MENA), South East Asia (SEA), Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and the European culture countries (ECC). Visit http://www.gemconsortium.org/

  

“Entrepreneurial success and prosperity has no age limits,” said Mike Herrington, Executive Director of GEM.

“While the traditional perception of entrepreneurship is that it is a young person’s endeavor, the data are showing us that, in many aspects, older people are a significant entrepreneurial force. But this segment is largely an overlooked and undervalued resource.”

According to the report, 18 percent of adults between the ages of 50 and 64 and 13 percent between the ages of 65 and 80 are self-employed compared to just 11 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 29. Eighteen percent of “middle-aged” entrepreneurs (aged 30 to 49) are self-employed.

Yet entrepreneurship programs and support are, by and large, geared towards younger segments. The report suggests that specialized support for older entrepreneurs could help unlock benefits for economic stability—especially in economies where senior entrepreneurship is underrepresented.

Regionally, senior entrepreneurship, in terms of both entrepreneurial intention (the percentage of the adult population who intend to start a business within the next three years) and early-stage entrepreneurial activity (those who have started and are running a business that is less than 42 months-old), is highest in Sub-Saharan Africa (35 percent/19 percent), Latin America and the Caribbean (27 percent/14 percent), and MENA (23 percent/7 percent) and lowest in the ECC (six percent/four percent).

Just 14 percent of seniors in South East Asia report entrepreneurial intentions and nine percent are actually engaged in an early-staged venture. These numbers are consistent with GEM findings that entrepreneurship levels are typically higher in factor-driven economies where the types of businesses started often require lower skills and less money to get off the ground.

According to Thomas Schøtt, Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Southern Denmark and lead author of the report, senior entrepreneurs bring with them a host of benefits—economic, social, and environmental—that the report labels “golden dividends”. These include relieving pressure of an aging population on the state and job creation.

“Every older adult who is self-employed is less likely to place a financial burden on society and to contribute to the economy of that country through the payment of taxes and by remaining economically active.

“Additionally, senior entrepreneurs are marginally more likely than their younger counterparts to employ more than five people so they are not only creating jobs for themselves but for others as well,” said Schøtt.

Additional economic benefits come from the fact that seniors who act as informal investors also tend to invest considerably more money compared to younger adults. Almost two thirds (63 percent) of older business angels invest more than the median of all investments.

And elderly entrepreneurs across all phases of entrepreneurial activity report substantially higher levels of satisfaction with both their life and their job, compared to elderly routine employees. This translates into better health and fewer demands being placed on social service/entitlement programs.

Schøtt said that these findings have particular significance for economies struggling with the perceived burden of an aging population.

“With approximately 16 percent of the world’s population 55 or older, the issues of entrepreneurial activity at these more advanced ages directly affect more than a 1.2 billion people,” he said.

“The world is beginning to understand how senior entrepreneurs with their wealth of work and life experience, deep networks, and eagerness to remain productive are a huge untapped resource.

“It is time that we stop thinking about this demographic as a liability and instead recognize them as assets, and work across sectors to help break down barriers to unleash their potential.

“It is imperative for governments to create innovative, inter-agency frameworks to marshal resources, catalyze strategic thinking, prioritize new policy, and create actionable research to advance this movement.”

Additional Findings

• Older individuals have the lowest confidence in their own ability to start and run a business, but risk-willingness is highest amongst older age groups.
• Older adults are slightly more likely to be social entrepreneurs than entrepreneurs in the other three age groups. This suggests that people may retire from jobs as employees or as self-employed, but may continue to pursue ventures with a social or community objective. This is an interesting finding, as social entrepreneurship is often associated with young changemakers who are idealistic in nature.
• Gender has an influence on senior entrepreneurial behavior. Entrepreneurial intentions are lowest among senior women compared to the other three age groups, with fewer than seven women expressing the intention to start a business for every ten men in this age group. Older people report the widest gender gap in terms of early-stage entrepreneurial activity, with only six women engaged in start-up activity for every ten male entrepreneurs in this age group.

About the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM)

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) was initiated in 1999 as a joint venture of Babson College and the London Business School. Starting with 10 participating economies, the project expanded to include 73 economies in its 2014 survey. The latest survey spans 62 economies. GEM is the largest and most developed research program on entrepreneurship in the world. GEM is unique because, unlike most entrepreneurship data sets that measure newer and smaller firms, GEM studies the behavior of individuals with respect to starting and managing businesses.

GEM academic teams in each participating economy are members of an exclusive research project that provides access to the collective knowledge of some of the world’s most renowned researchers and institutions involved in entrepreneurship research. At a time in history when individual entrepreneurial activity may hold the key to transforming the global economy and discouraging ingrained economic disparity in countries with minimal economic opportunity, GEM data has influenced national economic policies and continues to expand its collaborative role. Global sponsors of the research include Babson College (lead sponsor) in the United States, Universidad Del Desarrollo in Chile, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak in Malaysia, and Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico.

Sensory Loss Affects 94 Percent of Older Adults

Multisensory impairment more frequent among African -Americans

Newswise, February 21, 2016 — The first study to measure the full spectrum of age-related damage to all five senses found that 94 percent of older adults in the United States have at least one sensory deficit, 38 percent have two, and 28 percent have three, four or five.

The study, published in the February issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, also found that deficits in multiple senses were strongly associated with age, gender and race.

As expected, older participants in the study had more sensory deficits, with large differences in hearing, vision and smell. Men scored worse on hearing, smell and taste, but better than women for corrected vision.

African Americans scored lower on all senses, except hearing. Hispanics had lower scores on vision, touch and smell, but scored higher on taste.

Some of these deficits were mild but many were serious. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of those in the study—3,005 people between the ages of 57 and 85 who enrolled in a large, nationally representative sample—suffered from a significant deficit in at least one sense; 22 percent had major deficits in two or more senses.

“We know that sensory impairment is common and is often a harbinger of serious health problems, such as cognitive decline or falls, as well as more subtle ones like burns, caused by loss of touch sensitivity, food poisoning that goes undetected because of loss of smell and taste, and smoke inhalation, from loss of smell,” said study author Jayant Pinto, MD, associate professor of surgery at the University of Chicago. “Our findings here give us a better appreciation of the prevalence of multi-sensory loss, a first step toward learning more about what causes the senses to decline.”

The most prevalent sensory deficit, affecting 74 percent of participants in the study, was a decrease in the sense of taste. Twenty-six percent of the study subjects had a sense of taste rated only as fair, and 48 percent were rated poor.

Decreased sense of touch was also common. Thirty percent of study subjects had a normal sense of touch, but 38 percent were rated as fair and 32 percent as poor.

Age-related sensory loss is a serious problem. An earlier study from Pinto’s team, published in October 2014, found that olfactory dysfunction predicted mortality better than a diagnosis of heart failure or cancer. A similar study, published last September in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, found that hearing impairment may also be associated with an increased risk of death.

In this study, the authors found evidence of a common process underlying impairment of the five senses. They suspect that this underlying factor could involve nerve degeneration, environmental insults or underlying genetic susceptibility that contributes to sensory loss associated with aging.

The sensory impairment study was part of the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP), the first in-home study of social relationships and health in older adults. In the first wave of NSHAP, conducted in 2005-06, professional survey teams from the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago used validated tests to measure each subject’s ability to see, feel, smell, taste and hear.

• The vision study allowed participants to wear their glasses or contact lenses and measured their ability to see under typical home lighting conditions. Subjects with vision rated as 20/40 or better were ranked as good. Those between 20/40 and 20/63 were fair; those below 20/63 were considered poor.
• Touch measured subjects’ ability to distinguish between two points on the index finger of their dominant hand. Those who could feel two separate contact points 4 millimeters apart were considered good, 8 mm apart was fair, 12 mm (about half an inch) or more was poor.
• Smell was assessed using a validated taste that presents five different smells, one at a time. Those who correctly identified at least four of the five were rated good. Those who identified two or three were considered fair, and those who identified one or none were rated poor.
• Taste testing relied on four paper strips—sour, bitter, sweet and salty—applied to the tongue. Those who correctly described all four were rated as good. Those who got one or two right were rated fair, and those who got all four wrong were rated as poor.
• Interviewers for the study rated subjects’ ability to hear on a five-point scale based on how they responded during their conversation and categorized then as good, fair or poor. Subjects were allowed to wear their hearing aids if they chose to.

The interviewers also assessed participants’ age, physical and mental health, social and financial resources, education, and alcohol or substance abuse through structured interviews, testing and questionnaires.

Sensory loss related to age is an understudied issue. Shakespeare described it as “second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste.” The gradual decline of input from the senses “constrains how the elderly cope with social, physical and cognitive stresses, Pinto said. “It is a major part of why older people report decreased quality of life.”

“We need to understand the biology behind the links between age and sensory loss and design better ways to prevent its decline,” Pinto said. “People caring for older adults, including family members, caregivers and physicians, should pay close attention to impairments in vision, hearing, and smell.

There are interventions for those senses “that could make a big difference,” he said, for example eyeglasses, hearing aids and smell training. “Even simple things like increasing spices in foods could help those with taste loss or providing tactile clues for people with loss of touch could improve function. This area remains under active investigation.”

The study, “Global Sensory Impairment among Older Adults in the United States,” was funded by the National Institutes of Health—including the National Institute on Aging, the Office of Women’s Health Research, the Office of AIDS Research, the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research—the McHugh Otolaryngology Research Fund, the American Geriatrics Society, and the Institute of Translational Medicine at the University of Chicago.

Additional authors were Camil Correia, Kevin Lopez, Kristen Wroblewski, Megan Huisingh-Scheetz, David Kern, Rachel Chen, Philip Schumm, William Dale and Martha McClintock.

Study Shows Promising Safety Results for Anti-Aging Drug

First rapamycin metabolic study results in nonhuman primates results in new grant

Newswise, February 10, 2016– The search for the fountain of youth led to a 2009 discovery that a drug called rapamycin was shown to extend the lifespan of mice.

Since that time, studies on the metabolic side effects of rapamycin have made it unclear whether the drug is safe as a long-term treatment. A recent study published in the November issue of the journal Aging showed minimal metabolic side effects after continuous, long-term treatment with encapsulated rapamycin in a marmoset (monkey) model.

The study, completed by researchers with the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC) at Texas Biomedical Research Institute, is the first to examine the metabolic consequences of rapamycin dosing in healthy, non-human primates.

In addition to metabolic function, the researchers found that the encapsulated rapamycin was well tolerated by the marmosets.

“This initial study with marmosets as a model for human aging has allowed us to evaluate the efficacy of a new intervention treatment that looked promising in other animal model species for both healthspan and lifespan extension,” said Dr. Corinna Ross, lead author of the study and Assistant Professor Biology, Texas A&M University San Antonio.

“The results are encouraging,” said Dr. Suzette Tardif, Associate Director of SNPRC and co-investigator on the study. “Marmosets also offer a unique non-human primate model that will allow us to further evaluate not just the safety but the effectiveness of treatment with rapamycin.”
Due to results from this study, a grant for $2.7 million was awarded to the Barshop Institute and SNPRC by the National Institute on Aging to fund a new study to determine the effects of rapamycin lifespan and markers of healthy aging for a cohort of marmosets that have already reached middle age.

Dr. Adam Salmon, principal investigator of the new study and Assistant Professor/Research Department of Molecular Medicine at the Barshop Institute, said, “These studies will provide an important step towards translational approaches to delay age-related disease and improve healthy aging in humans by means of pharmaceutical inhibition of mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin).”
The new study begins this month.

###

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, with missions of teaching, research and healing, is one of the country’s leading health sciences universities. Its schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health professions and graduate biomedical sciences have more than 32,200 alumni who are advancing their fields throughout the world. With six campuses in San Antonio and Laredo, the university has a FY 16 revenue operating budget of $801.8 million and is the primary driver of its community’s $30.6 billion biomedical and health care industry. For more information on the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit www.uthscsa.edu.

Texas Biomed is one of the world's leading independent biomedical research institutions dedicated to advancing health worldwide through innovative biomedical research. Texas Biomed partners with hundreds of researchers and institutions around the world to develop vaccines and therapeutics against viral pathogens causing AIDS, hepatitis, herpes, hemorrhagic fevers and parasitic diseases responsible for malaria, schistosomiasis and Chagas disease. The Institute also has programs in the genetics of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, psychiatric disorders and other diseases. For more information on Texas Biomed, go to www.TxBiomed.org.