The New Zealand Boomer Dreams Study 2009 is the most comprehensive study so far undertaken into the country’s million-plus baby boomer generation and their plans for what’s starting to be called their “unretirement”.

Today’s boomers are better educated, healthier, more affluent and better off than the generation before them. They are also likely to live twenty to thirty years after retirement age. Baby boomers the world over have notoriously never conformed as expected and, despite speculation, there is no evidence to suggest that they now plan to behave like the generation before them and “retire gracefully to do charitable works”.

American, Australian and British baby boomers are typically not eagerly anticipating lives of disengaged retirement. Instead, many plan to work, contribute to social causes and continue to influence society, as they have all their lives. New Zealand baby boomers have similar (but not identical) aspirations and intentions, suggesting that current concerns about the burden they might be on pensions and social services, and the hole they might leave in the workforce, are quite misplaced.

Overseas research has found that many baby boomers want to keep working, but on their own terms and with more time for leisure, travel and their families.

It is important for businesses, social providers, public policy developers and Government to know what will happen in the future for New Zealand baby boomers, because of the potential social, financial, business and economic ramifications. The study asks New Zealand baby boomers what their plans and desires are for the future. Their answers have a distinctly New Zealand character but are similar to boomers overseas; they are likely to surprise social planners and both relieve and frustrate Generation X and Y workers.

New Zealand baby boomers want to renegotiate their life expectations, and have the numbers and economic might to drive society into any change they need.

The New Zealand Boomer Dreams Study 2009 closely follows an American Boomer Dreams study conducted in 2006 by respected American social researchers, The Futures Company (formerly Yankelovich Inc.), and is replicated with permission. This American firm originally coined the term, “Baby Boomers” in the 1960s and has been tracking the generational cohort for more than thirty years.