Thirty year olds need to start planning their retirement. Fifty year olds need to make younger friends and 60 year olds need to go back to school.
That’s according to a book that looks at how we can stop one of humanity’s greatest achievements from turning into a nightmare.
Andrew Scott, the co-author of The 100-Year Life, publishes a treatise on March 14: The Longevity Imperative. In it he argues that our longer lifespans are ushering in a new age of humanity. “Get ready for fundamental change in what it means to be human,” he says.
Scott’s call provoked a debate in the political and health spheres: James Bethell, a Conservative former health minister and peer, called it “the most important book of the year”.
He added: “This highlights that the current government has no vision or commitment to resolve these issues. It is sloppy, lazy and does not take the health of our children seriously.
“The public gets what needs to change – it is the political leadership that is the obstacle, by which I mean the prime minister, clinicians, policy makers and the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility, who lack the ability to measure the impact of public health measures.”
Scott argues that without fundamental societal transformation we are tumbling into a dystopian near future of rising health costs, a pension crisis, mass dementia and overwhelmed care homes.
We are already part of the way there, he says. The pension age will rise to 67 in April 2026 amid a continued rise in people out of work due to illness, and only 9% of men and 16% of women born today can expect to reach state pension age in achieve good health.
There are 2.8 million people who are not looking for work due to health problems – a third increase on the 2.1 million before the Covid pandemic.
However, if approached differently, our longer life span could be the greatest gift ever given to man, says Scott.
“This could be a takeoff moment in human history,” he said. “Aging is not inevitable. It can be delayed and even postponed. Aging better is about increasing healthy life expectancy, so that it narrows the gap with life expectancy.”
Retirement age should be linked to healthy life expectancy, not life expectancy, says Scott. But we must prepare for our longer lives at ever younger ages. Instead of focusing resources on supporting old people, we should help the young to become the healthiest old people.
“If life expectancy continues to increase, but healthy life expectancy and productivity also increase, there is no need to raise the retirement age,” he said.
Scott takes the government to task for responding to longevity by simply raising the retirement age, lowering pensions and raising taxes.
He claims the NHS focus on keeping people alive but not healthy – only 2.5% of total health expenditure in high-income countries is focused on prevention rather than intervention. He wants science to stop trying to eradicate certain diseases and instead focus on slowing down how we age.
Scott also says people don’t plan far enough ahead to avoid later decades being plagued by ill health, loneliness and poverty.
Dr Penny Dash, responsible for improving the health and healthcare of 2.5 million people in her role as chair of the North West London Integrated Care System, said the NHS had been trying to shift resources from hospitals to primary care for the past 20 years. moved , community care and social care.
“However, change is not always popular and traditional perspectives of health care mean hospitals remain,” says Dash, who has advised local, regional and national health systems worldwide.
“But with at least a third of hospital beds occupied by people who don’t need to be there, and who risk losing muscle mass and independence in the process – and large numbers of people with undiagnosed and/or undertreated long-term conditions, such as high blood pressure or diabetes – we clearly need to make more substantial changes over the next few years if we are to deliver improvements in health and quality of life.”
How to live a multi-phase life
1. Mix it up
Create multi-stage careers to match the multi-stage lives that come with longer lives. We have more years to be used – in our 20s, when we discover who we are, in our 30s, when we have small families, and in our 40s, when you want to retrain because you have 30 years of work left.
2. Be prepared
A multi-phase life will have many ups and downs. We need to think about our finances, networks – professional and personal – and our identity. We need to build a wide range of options for different transitions at different times.
3. Back to school
We need to develop a lifelong focus on health and education. Stay in tune with the future and constantly look for what you need next.
4. Diversify for the future
Think about what your current role is teaching you that might be useful for later transitions. Do you work in a declining sector? Is your current job age-friendly? Do you have transferable skills – can you imagine convincing a prospective employer of them?
5. Go beyond a peak
With a multi-stage life, a continued progression to a higher salary is not the only goal. Think about what you will need at different ages.
