America Needs to Radically Rethink What It Means to Be Old

How is that for a provocative title? This is an article by Jonathan Rauch in the January edition of The Atlantic. Rauch’s thesis is that “the ’60s model of retirement needs updating in the face of new demographic, fiscal, and social realities.” 

He refers in his article to Andrew Scott’s book The Longevity Imperative: How to Build a Healthier and More Productive Society to Support Our Longer Lives. Scott, an economist at London Business School, talks about two longevity revolutions. The first is something we have been experiencing over the last 150 years. People are living long enough to actually be old. With the advances in medicine, diet and exercise we are living much longer and healthier than our relatives just two or three generations back. For instance, I have outlived all of my grandparents, and their final years were pretty limited. Scott writes, “The first longevity revolution was about getting the majority to reach old age; the second will be about changes in how we age.” This second longevity revolution is the kind of stuff we have been talking about for the last few years in third third ministry classes and events. 

Here are a couple of Scott’s thoughts…

· The core problem today, he argues, is that lifespan outruns health span. The time has come for an ambitious, all-of-society effort to close that gap. Health-care priorities should shift more toward prevention, which today receives only 3 percent of U.S. health-care spending. 

• The second longevity revolution will also require new institutions, expectations, and attitudes. With millions of people living vigorously into their 80s and beyond, the very idea of “retirement”—the expectation that people will leave the workforce at an arbitrary age—makes no sense. Jobs need to be made more friendly to older workers (through measures as elaborate as shifting physical tasks to robots and as simple as providing different footwear and chairs); employers need to exploit age diversity (which improves team productivity by blending older workers’ experience and skill with younger workers’ creativity and drive); education and training need to be available and encouraged throughout life. 

Rausch concludes, “Now on the doorstep of routine 100-year lifespans, America needs to rethink the meaning of school, work, and retirement—and what it even means to be old.” One of Raush’s ideas that I found particularly interesting was his observation that the conceptual categories of childhood, adolescence, middle age, and old age no longer work. He suggests adding the category “late adulthood” between middle age and old age. 

You and I are part of this second longevity revolution which is not as much about extending our lifespans, although that continues to happen, but about rethinking how we do these extra years that have been gifted to us. Thanks for being a part of this discussion.