Investing for Retirement: Financial Markets and New Cultural Sensibilities of Old Age

This paper analyzes the conceptions of old age and the idea of investments for retirement that have been diffused by economic and business media in the context of increasing longevity of the Brazilian population. It is part of a broader exploratory research that analyzes the cultural frames permeating the social construction of the so called silver markets. The shared meanings about age, generations and the elderly are basic institutions that support diverse social processes. They are not self-evident, as a functionalist view would suggest, and constitute important research objects to understanding how the economic processes are shaped by culture and power. To investigate how they changed over the last decades and how these changes influence the economy, the content of two Brazilian magazines of the mass media called Exame and Pequenas Empresas, Grandes Negócios (Small Companies, Great Business) were assessed. These are the magazines of greatest circulation in their market segment in Brazil and they are focused, respectively, on business executives and investors and small entrepreneurs and franchising. The statements related to old age and the elderly produced between 1990 and 2014 were analyzed based on the content analysis technique, revealing the main themes, terms, ideas, markets, organizations and persons presented in their pages.

Retirement issues were the most frequent theme addressed in the material assessed and it was related to a specific meaning of old age. In line with much of the international literature of sociology of generation, it was verified the spread of notions like silver markets and third age. In general, these views promote the elderly as a phase in which one has time to personal satisfaction and when the dreams delayed may come true. The articles assessed can be divided in two categories. The first one is related to the individual level, promoting the old age and the need to plan for it as a private responsibility. The second is at a more macro level, appealing to the idea of the demographic changes and the population aging, presenting possible challenges to be faced by the countries that are in this process and proposals to overcome them. The economic logic is often dominant in both levels and the articles are usually based on the idea that each person should plan their future looking for do not reduce their consumption power in the old age. So, there is a struggle between the ideas of old age as a source of funds and as a source of misery and expenses. These diffused sensibilities are highly convergent with the interests of financial markets, tending to generate massive inflows of resources to pension funds and other financial investments. This indicates the huge capacity of the economy to shape the meaning of life in contemporary societies and, more specifically, the influence of financialization to shape culture and every day activities.