The following is an excerpt from Keren Etkin’s new book, The AgeTech Revolution, which explores the intersection of technology and aging.

In the United States, where ten thousand Baby Boomers turn sixty-five each day, a recent study found that the median savings balance among them is a mere $144,000—hardly enough for twenty years (Collinson et al., 2021). For women, who usually earn less of what men make and often spend fewer years working full time because they are the caregivers for their families, the stats are even more alarming. One out of five women over the age of sixty-five has nothing saved for retirement, and the poverty rate for this demographic is double that of men in that age group (Fox, 2020).

In most countries, the “official” retirement age is around sixty-five years old. While many people chose to work past that age, some are forced to quit working before that. A data analysis done by ProPublica and the Urban Institute found that “more than half of older US workers are pushed out of longtime jobs before they choose to retire” (Gosselin, 2018). Forced retirement can put a dent in people’s retirement savings, and so can working part-time because of caregiving duties. This reason for forced early retirement is more common for women, who are expected to provide care, whether it is for children or for older relatives (Fahle & McGarry, 2018). In Japan, elder care is a much more likely reason for a Japanese woman to leave the workforce than is child care. Thirty-eight percent of Japanese females leave because of lack of elder care, compared to 32 percent who leave because of lack of child care, so creating opportunities for support services and technologies that can help caregivers has larger economic implications (Matsui el al., 2019)

What Do People Do?

Those who can often choose to continue working, whether it is full time or part time. I spoke to Sherry, an eighty-two-year-old Canadian who works as an executive director at an association. As a Canadian, she doesn’t have to worry about out-of-pocket health care costs. She did, however, mention some of the extra costs that enable her to age in place. “If the goal is to keep seniors at home safely as long as possible, and you get someone like me, who’s by myself, I do have a cleaning lady. I do have someone to help with my garden. I do have an odd job guy, I’ve got great neighbors, but I want to be independent.”

These extra costs, combined with the fact she doesn’t have a pension, are part of the reason why she still works full-time at the age of eighty-two.

“I’m well compensated for my job now, and that’s part of the reason why I want to keep working. I have to have enough money saved to be able to pay, not just to keep myself, but to pay for all the help that I need now.”

There’s also the option to find “gig economy” work that is more flexible. The challenge is finding a platform that provides the type of service you’re skilled at. sĀge is such a platform. Esther Hershcovich, the company’s founder, describes the company as a “gig economy platform for personalized, affordable learning and social experiences hosted by expert retirees.” sĀge now offers live experiences led by retirees around four main areas of focus: art, business, education, and wellness. The sĀges that are available on the platform come from Canada, the United States, Israel, Australia, and South America, and the students who participate in the experiences also come from many different countries, so it’s a global community.

When I first met Hershcovich, who is Canadian born and now living in Tel Aviv, it was a warm Tel Aviv evening. We were having a picnic with some friends, watching the sunset from a hilltop above one of the city’s busiest beaches. 

I had recently quit my job at Intuition Robotics and co-founded a new company. Hershcovich was starting her own company as well. 

I was so impressed by how passionate she was about her work that I decided to interview her for TheGerontechnologist. I scheduled to meet her in her office in southern Tel Aviv, and as I waited for her to arrive, I reflected on her journey from an interior designer in Montreal to an Israeli agetech entrepreneur. When Hershcovich moved to Israel, she had a promising career as an interior designer, working for some of Israel’s leading architecture firms. She’s a naturally curious person, and with her parents now retired in their seventies and eighties still living in Montreal, she was unable to properly learn from them. “I live in Tel Aviv; my parents live in Montreal. There were a lot of things that I wanted to learn, things like carpentry or welding. I kept thinking—what if my dad lived around the corner from me?”

Initially, she set out to build an online platform that would enable people to connect with Sages: older adults who live nearby and who have expertise around a certain topic that they could teach and pass on. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and in-person, indoor experiences were no longer a viable option, especially not for older adults. “We were set to launch in March 2020, which was terrible timing to be focused on in-person connections.”

After a few days of thinking, she decided to turn it around and bring everything online: “That was really when we realized just how big this opportunity is and how much potential it has connecting people around the world and being able to see that technology isn’t that scary for older people.”

I believe platforms like sĀge could become part of the “future of work” for older adults. With the words “gig economy” already an integral part of our world and a way for many people around the world to make ends meet on their own terms, it makes a lot of sense for older adults who have knowledge and expertise and want to continue working in a more flexible manner in their later years.”