PRIME Initiative

I still have people saying to me that the over 50s are risk averse. And so - the implication often is, that we should not bother with providing enterprise support for them.

Up to now my answer has had to be two-fold.

Firstly, if we use the word “prudent” in place of risk-averse, we get a whole new perspective on older people’s attitude to entrepreneurship. Prudence genuinely is something that often comes with age. Prudence is prior experience and learning applied to a situation - with prudence you calculate risk rather than just pursue it. If our youthful bankers had been a bit more prudent rather than “risk-perverse” we would all be a lot better off now.

Secondly this argument that the over 50s are risk averse is a very sweeping generalisation, and like other such generalisations looks less and less plausible the more you examine it. Are you really telling me that at the age of 50 a risk gene is triggered in all humans that turns them into gibbering wrecks hiding in the corner in mortal terror? There are so many people in the UK aged over 50 but still below state pension age (over nine million and growing) that you would expect to find a broad range of character traits among them. They may not be very dissimilar to the population at large.

But these arguments have never stopped those fond of the risk-averse argument advancing it as if it were established truth.

Now a report from NESTA provides some robust research evidence to back what PRIME has been arguing from the practical experience of helping over 3,000 over 50s a year. Olderpreneurs are no more and no less risk averse than their peers. In fact 50 to state-pension age people make up 22.4 per cent of the economically active workforce but are providing 27 per cent of the successful start-ups, according to this research.

It is a great pity the research is not published in hardback. Then I could use it to thwack the next person who tells me the over 50s are risk-averse.

Download:
NESTA’s third age entrepreneurs report (PDF)

“The grey economy - how third age entrepreneurs
are contributing to growth”, by Ron Botham and Andrew Graves. A research report published by NESTA.

Abstract from NESTA site

The population is getting older, with many more people aged 50 and over. Their economic contribution is also increasing. More people are working beyond statutory retirement age. And more of them are running their own businesses.

At the same time, particularly during a time of recession, the government has a strong interest in encouraging more people to become self-employed or set up their own company.

Particularly where such companies create work for others, they can make a valuable contribution to the recovery.