The Future of Pastime-based Services for Elderly People

Overview

Due to birthrate decline and population aging, the importance of elderly people in the consumer markets is set to increase. In particular, elderly people have an increasing amount of spare time, and trends in the pastime-based services market have become a major focus of attention. This report estimates the scale of the pastime-based services market in 2015 and analyzes market characteristics.

The scale of the market, in terms of total number of days of activity, can be estimated as "population times per capita (annual) days of activity". This calculation suggests that the market for pastime-based services for elderly people will grow by around 23% over the next decade. However, a breakdown of overall pastime-based services market trends by category reveals that the growth of the market for services for elderly people will not be sufficient to cancel out the shrinkage of the market for services for those of working age and that, consequently, the overall market in many categories is set to shrink. This is because, although elderly people have an increasing amount of spare time, they are reducing the amount of time they allocate to pastime-based services, as compared with people of working age.

The reason that elderly people are allocating less time to pastime-based services is that they are becoming polarized into people who are positive in their use of spare time and those who are negative, and that the negative group are the majority. In other words, while the number of people who do not make use of pastime-based services is increasing (a fall in the ratio of active people), those who do make use of pastime-based services are allocating more time to them. The reason that overall market size is declining in many categories is that, in many categories, the negative impact of the fall in the ratio of active people is greater than the positive impact of the greater allocation of time.

Thus, if the market for pastime-based services is to grow, it is important that the ratio of active people be increased. Effective ways to increase activity among the elderly include expanding human networks and raising the employment ratio.

For more information on the content of this report, please contact Hideki Matsumura, the Japan Research Institute, Limited.

Tel: 03-3288-4524
E-mail：matsumura.hideki@jri.co.jp