Here are some of the highlights:

• 55% reported that their income would not keep up with the cost of living (as opposed to younger adults at 44% and older adults at 43%.)

• 26% expect to live comfortably in retirement (younger adults: 37% and older adults: 33%.) (NMI puts the figure at only 14% for boomers)

• When asked to rate their present life, boomers came up with the lowest average ratings

• 70% are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, compared to 54% of younger adults

Conclusion? It would be logical for marketers to read these statistics and assume that wasting advertising dollars on such a gloomy demographic would hardly be worth their while. (Except, of course, for manufacturers of anti-depressants and undertakers.)

But as any researcher worth his/her salt will tell you, statistics, alone, only give part of the picture. The NMI study—the same one that confirmed that boomers are unhappy with the economic/political aspects of their lives—reports that most boomers have a very positive attitude towards the future, the majority reporting that “the best years of my life are still ahead of me.” When asked to envision themselves at age 70, the majority pictured themselves in upbeat and positive ways. The words they used most often to describe themselves: Thankful, happy, satisfied, spiritual.

How can this be? How can boomers be somber about their financial prospects but upbeat about their lives and futures?

Here is one researcher’s (my) qualitative/intuitive attempt to make sense of the dichotomies…any of which I offer up as a premise for further testing.

1. The boomers, themselves, did not identify themselves as gloomy. Dissatisfied is not the same as gloomy. They can be clear-eyed about dim financial prospects (which in this economy, perhaps basically means they have a firmer grasp on reality than the other generations) without becoming depressed.

2. They may also have higher expectations than the other generations, therefore “not having enough to live comfortably in retirement” may, to the high self-esteem boomer mean only traveling to Paris rather than the around the world cruise to which they’d felt entitled.

3. At the same time, having been disappointed by external circumstances many times before during the course of their lives (starting with the assassination of JFK, which signaled their original loss of innocence) they may well have becom more adept at navigating the terrain from unmet high expectations to acceptance more quickly than other generations.

4. In other words, despite the adversity with which they are faced, they can still be thankful and spiritual, for starters. And in a robust combination of resilience and denial that is peculiarly, particularly boomerish, even happy and satisfied.

So, while boomers may whine a lot about how the world has screwed things up, marketers can rest assured. They’ll never be too depressed for a cup of Starbucks and an afternoon at the mall.

Carol Orsborn