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A hundred and counting
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A hundred and counting A centenarian society is on its way. It’s going to be a huge challenge, finds Marek Kohn The 100-Year Life: Living and working in an age of longevity by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, Bloomsbury, £18.99
AFP/Getty Images
WHEN Poles want to wish somebody well, they wish them a hundred years of life. This is a charming prospect, as long as the chances of it coming to pass are vanishingly small. But once it starts to look as though it might actually happen, you may think that people should be careful what they wish for you. As Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott make arrestingly clear, it will take a lot more than good wishes to make sure that a hundred years is a blessing, not a curse. Life expectancies have been rising by up to three months a year since 1840, and there is no sign of that flattening. Gratton and Scott draw on a 2009 study to Gratton and Scott advance the show that if the trend continues, idea of a multistage life, with more than half the babies born in repeated changes of direction and wealthier countries since 2000 attention. Material and intangible may reach their 100th birthdays. assets will need upkeep, renewal With a few simple, devastating or replacement. Skills will need strokes, Gratton and Scott show updating, augmenting or that under the current system it is discarding, as will networks almost certain you won’t be able of friends and acquaintances. to save enough to fund several Earning will be interspersed with decades of decent retirement. For learning or self-reflection. As the example, if your life expectancy authors warn, recreation will have is 100, you want a pension that is to become “re-creation”. 50 per cent of your final salary, Clearly this will be expensive. and you save 10 per cent of your As well as saving for retirement, earnings each year, they calculate people will need to pay for selfthat you won’t be able to retire till reflection phases and education. your 80s. People with 100-year If you are, say, a hairdresser, you life expectancies must recognise they are in for the long haul, and “More than half the babies born in wealthier countries make an early start arranging since 2000 may reach their lives accordingly. their 100th birthdays” But how to go about this? 44 | NewScientist | 9 July 2016
Our young selves should hang on to rewards for our older incarnations
won’t need to worry too much about skills becoming obsolete. But you probably won’t be able to afford much self-renewal. Gratton and Scott point out the twofold inequality of lengthening lifespans: the rich live longer than the poor, and the better-off are better off in all the resources needed to make increasing longevity a blessing not a burden. Even the better-off will mostly be stretched by the demands of the multistage life, though, and so the need for a good partner will loom ever larger. Although two can’t live as cheaply as one, they can live more cheaply together than apart. Crucially, too, partners will look to each other for
financial cover when not earning. There’s a contradiction here that the authors don’t really acknowledge. The 100-year life demands constant review and readiness to change one’s work and one’s self, but relies heavily on commitment to one’s partner. Yet people already review their relationships, resulting in changes of partner. They may need to reverse that policy. Perhaps Gratton and Scott felt their groundbreaking book should skirt some of the tougher terrain, so as not to discourage readers who aren’t ready to think as boldly as they do. The most significant absence is about ageing itself. Although they note that financial literacy declines with age, for the most part they write as though people think and feel much the same way whatever age they are. Yet recent research illustrates that younger and older people have different incentives. Researchers at University College London, for example, found that older people don’t respond as strongly to rewards as younger ones. They think that may be because the “reward” neurotransmitter, dopamine, declines by up to 10 per cent every decade. If they are still working, older people will be competing with younger people who have more motivation in their synapses. Hopefully those younger people will have the foresight to hang on to their rewards so they can pass them on to their less motivated, less competent older selves. The 100-year life will need the old to be young, and the young old. n Marek Kohn is a science writer based in Brighton, UK
A hundred and counting A centenarian society is on its way. It’s going to be a huge challenge, finds Marek Kohn The 100-Year Life: Living and working in an age of longevity by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, Bloomsbury, £18.99
AFP/Getty Images
WHEN Poles want to wish somebody well, they wish them a hundred years of life. This is a charming prospect, as long as the chances of it coming to pass are vanishingly small. But once it starts to look as though it might actually happen, you may think that people should be careful what they wish for you. As Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott make arrestingly clear, it will take a lot more than good wishes to make sure that a hundred years is a blessing, not a curse. Life expectancies have been rising by up to three months a year since 1840, and there is no sign of that flattening. Gratton and Scott draw on a 2009 study to Gratton and Scott advance the show that if the trend continues, idea of a multistage life, with more than half the babies born in repeated changes of direction and wealthier countries since 2000 attention. Material and intangible may reach their 100th birthdays. assets will need upkeep, renewal With a few simple, devastating or replacement. Skills will need strokes, Gratton and Scott show updating, augmenting or that under the current system it is discarding, as will networks almost certain you won’t be able of friends and acquaintances. to save enough to fund several Earning will be interspersed with decades of decent retirement. For learning or self-reflection. As the example, if your life expectancy authors warn, recreation will have is 100, you want a pension that is to become “re-creation”. 50 per cent of your final salary, Clearly this will be expensive. and you save 10 per cent of your As well as saving for retirement, earnings each year, they calculate people will need to pay for selfthat you won’t be able to retire till reflection phases and education. your 80s. People with 100-year If you are, say, a hairdresser, you life expectancies must recognise they are in for the long haul, and “More than half the babies born in wealthier countries make an early start arranging since 2000 may reach their lives accordingly. their 100th birthdays” But how to go about this? 44 | NewScientist | 9 July 2016
Our young selves should hang on to rewards for our older incarnations
won’t need to worry too much about skills becoming obsolete. But you probably won’t be able to afford much self-renewal. Gratton and Scott point out the twofold inequality of lengthening lifespans: the rich live longer than the poor, and the better-off are better off in all the resources needed to make increasing longevity a blessing not a burden. Even the better-off will mostly be stretched by the demands of the multistage life, though, and so the need for a good partner will loom ever larger. Although two can’t live as cheaply as one, they can live more cheaply together than apart. Crucially, too, partners will look to each other for
financial cover when not earning. There’s a contradiction here that the authors don’t really acknowledge. The 100-year life demands constant review and readiness to change one’s work and one’s self, but relies heavily on commitment to one’s partner. Yet people already review their relationships, resulting in changes of partner. They may need to reverse that policy. Perhaps Gratton and Scott felt their groundbreaking book should skirt some of the tougher terrain, so as not to discourage readers who aren’t ready to think as boldly as they do. The most significant absence is about ageing itself. Although they note that financial literacy declines with age, for the most part they write as though people think and feel much the same way whatever age they are. Yet recent research illustrates that younger and older people have different incentives. Researchers at University College London, for example, found that older people don’t respond as strongly to rewards as younger ones. They think that may be because the “reward” neurotransmitter, dopamine, declines by up to 10 per cent every decade. If they are still working, older people will be competing with younger people who have more motivation in their synapses. Hopefully those younger people will have the foresight to hang on to their rewards so they can pass them on to their less motivated, less competent older selves. The 100-year life will need the old to be young, and the young old. n Marek Kohn is a science writer based in Brighton, UK