How Can We Fix the Economy to Support a World Where Living to 100 Is Normal?

What Does “Evergreen Aging” Mean and How Can It Help You Live Longer and Better?

Unlock the secrets to a longer, healthier life with Andrew Scott’s The Longevity Imperative. Learn why “healthspan” matters more than lifespan, how to future-proof your career, and the 6 principles of an “evergreen” lifestyle that redefine aging.

Ready to stop fearing old age and start planning for it? Read the full summary now to discover the 6-step “Evergreen” plan for a vibrant, productive life at any age.

Recommendation

Global life expectancy is on the rise. While living longer might sound like a gift, to make the most of that time, you must maximize your “healthspan.” Economics professor and longevity researcher Andrew J. Scott urges businesses, policymakers, and health care providers to take steps to ensure older people enjoy a better quality of life, as doing so benefits society as a whole. In his deep dive into the intersection between public health and economies, Scott calls for a mindset shift about what it means to age, how societies define good health, and the roles older people play in modern life.

Take-Aways

• As global life expectancy rises, humanity must take steps to improve long-term quality of life.
• Becoming more comfortable with the prospect of living longer requires a shift in mindset — and a proactive approach toward health.
• Prioritizing “healthspans” over lifespans is an economic imperative.
• Public health efforts should prioritize preventing disease by supporting an “evergreen” lifestyle.
• For an evergreen economy to prosper, governments must increase the retirement age and ensure aging populations remain productive.
• Extend your career longevity by prioritizing five key things.
• Combat ageism by treating aging as a process instead of viewing old age as a state of being.
• Take an evergreen approach to aging in your own life by adopting six principles.

Summary

As global life expectancy rises, humanity must take steps to improve long-term quality of life.

With global life expectancy on the rise, the majority of people alive today should plan to live into their 80s, 90s, or even 100s.Centenarians comprise the most rapidly growing demographic worldwide. In the United States, an infant has a more than 50% chance of living past 95. Increased longevity isn’t limited to rich countries. In the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, life expectancy rose in 202 out of 210 countries.Though the pandemic negatively affected these gains temporarily, following widespread public vaccination campaigns, life expectancy figures returned to pre-pandemic levels in most countries.

“For the first time in several thousand years of human development, the young can expect to become the very old. That is a remarkable achievement.”

These demographic shifts mean nations must face the realities of supporting the needs of larger aging populations. It’s time to embrace a global “longevity imperative”: Humanity must not only prepare to live longer lives than ever before but also prioritize increasing the quality of life in old age. This challenge includes addressing disparities regarding who gets to live the longest. In the United States, for example, the wealthiest 1% of men are expected to outlive the poorest 1% by 15 years. There’s a similar 10-year disparity between the wealthiest and poorest women. Planning for a quickly aging society also requires improving health care systems, thus helping prevent age-related diseases, such as diabetes and dementia, and ensuring older individuals from all socio-economic backgrounds can enjoy long, healthy, productive lives.

Becoming more comfortable with the prospect of living longer requires a shift in mindset — and a proactive approach toward health.

To capture the variability of individual aging experiences throughout populations, focus less on chronological age and more on where people fall on the “health and frailty” spectrum. The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) uses a “frailty index” to predict mortality risk. The researchers asked survey respondents health-related questions like, “Do you have problems walking a hundred yards?”; “Have you ever had high blood pressure?”; “Do you feel lonely?” The more affirmative answers people give, the higher their frailty score, indicating a lower mental and physical capacity. Using the frailty index helps combat biased perceptions and stereotypes about aging. For example, if you’re in the top 10% of the healthiest 90-year-olds in the UK with low frailty index scores, you’re statistically likely to have less than half of mental and physical health problems from which “the frailest (bottom 10%) fifty-year-olds” suffer.

“The sad truth is we have fashioned a society that doesn’t invest enough in later years because, for most of human history, only a minority reached those ages.”

Those working within the health care sector must stop viewing healthy aging as merely a lack of disease. Instead, they must start working toward positive health goals — that is, ways to extend people’s health longevity. The World Health Organization’s Decade of Healthy Ageing, which started in 2021, takes a step in the right direction. The program aims to develop and maintain “the functional ability” that allows people to make the most of their longer lifespans. Don’t wait to think about old age until you’re old. Aging is a gradual process, and the choices you make here and now will either help or hinder your future well-being.

Prioritizing “healthspans” over lifespans is an economic imperative.

To determine the amount people are willing to pay to reduce their risks of dying, economists use the “Value of a Statistical Life” or VSL. This figure doesn’t refer to a person’s inherent value — to which you cannot assign a quantitative metric — but rather, the total monetary amount people are willing to pay to decrease their likelihood of death. For example, governments may pay to install safety curbs on highways to save lives, while consumers often pay more for vehicle safety features. If the value of the number of saved lives exceeds the costs, investing in reducing mortality risks is worth it. The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) also assigns an economic value to mortality prevention. NICE uses a metric called “quality-adjusted life years” (QALYs) to determine whether a treatment adds a QALY to a patient’s life. If it does and costs less than $30,000 a year, the therapy will get the green light.

“Generally speaking, the more time we have, the better. But not all time is equally valuable.”

Using the VSL approach, researchers Andrew Scott, David Sinclair, and Martin Ellison identify an economic imperative to slow down the rate of biological aging. For example, if you raise life expectancy in the United States by one year and slow biological aging enough to reduce frailty and mortality rates, it’s worth $180,000 per year of life gained. By contrast, extending life expectancy without improving an individual’s declining health has a valuation of only $100,000. In comparison, an average year of a person’s life has a VSL of only $150,000 (this is because when you improve your health throughout your life, you boost the quality, and thus VSL, of younger years as well). There’s an even higher potential value in investing in scientific research into age-reversal therapies: Imagine how much more you might value an extra year of life at 90 if a medical intervention could ensure you enjoyed the health of a 50-year-old.

Public health efforts should prioritize preventing disease by supporting an “evergreen” lifestyle.

Health care systems center around providing patients with clinical care — for example, surgeries and pharmaceutical interventions. Yet, they also need to focus on preventative care. Research shows that in the United States, 80% of the differences in people’s health outcomes result from various socio-economic influences — which account for just under 50% — and their “individual behaviors” — which account for about one-third. Just 16% of this variation results from clinical care interventions. These numbers underscore why health care providers looking to drive better health outcomes must move the focus away from treating symptoms and toward encouraging patients to live healthier lives.

“How we age is affected by everything from the built environment to the nature of work, public transport, loneliness, what we eat, financial security, ageism, education, design, water and sanitation, and much more.”

Public health initiatives can embrace an “evergreen” model of health — centered around encouraging healthier lifestyle choices — by preventatively tackling the following six detriments to good health:

1. Smoking — Roughly eight million people die each year from smoking-related factors. Smoking — or inhaling others’ smoke — also increases your likelihood of developing several age-related diseases. This creates an imperative to reduce smoking, especially in lower-income countries.
2. Alcohol — Your risk of developing age-related diseases also increases with your alcohol consumption. Alcohol use disorder is a public health crisis in nations such as the US, where it affects 32.6 million adults.
3. Air pollution — Air pollution is the cause of nine million deaths each year. Research also shows that it’s correlated with a rise in dementia.
4. Social isolation — Being lonely doesn’t just harm your mental health; it can also increase your risk of premature death. Lonely people are more likely to die from a heart attack or a stroke or develop dementia.
5. Insufficient physical activity — The less you move, the higher your likelihood of developing a chronic disease.
6. Obesity — Research shows that moderate obesity (a BMI of between 30 and 35) cuts people’s life expectancy by roughly three years. Severe obesity (a BMI of between 40 and 50) can cut your life short by as much as a decade.

For an evergreen economy to prosper, governments must increase the retirement age and ensure aging populations remain productive.

Many people often dismiss older workers’ contributions to the economy. Yet, most employment growth in the wealthiest countries over the past decade can be attributed to workers older than 50. Economists often assert that an aging society will shrink GDPs, as people assume that an increased number of older people within a population correlates with a reduction in the number of individuals productively employed.But increasing the number of years older people can enjoy good health disrupts this narrative, as healthy older people can keep contributing to their nations’ GDPs.

“Delivering a longevity dividend by raising our productivity over a longer life will require three distinct sets of government policies: increasing the retirement age, raising the proportion of people working in the years running up to retirement and boosting the productivity of older workers.”

Businesses and governments can collaborate to extend lifetime productivity by raising national retirement ages and ensuring older workers remain productive.Companies, for example, could increase their efforts to retain workers over 50, offering upskilling resources to help those employees improve their skills or learn new ones, for example.Countries could raise the age of retirement while ensuring there are enough “age-friendly” jobs that meet the needs of older workers, who often require less physically demanding work, a slower pace, greater autonomy, and flexible hours. Companies could protect workers’ well-being by respecting the importance of leisure time (for example, by normalizing the four-day workweek).

Extend your career longevity by prioritizing five key things.

Do the following to ensure you have a long, dynamic career path:

• Embrace non-linearity — Prepare for different stages and numerous transitions in your career: you may pivot from one role to another and shift your priorities.For example, perhaps you opt to change career paths at age 30 or take a brief break to care for your family.
• Prepare for disruptions — Build financial security and cultivate strong relationships to navigate periods of your life in which your earning capacity may slow more easily.
• Never stop learning — Embrace a learner’s mindset, treating learning and growth as ongoing processes. For example, you might return to school in mid-life and get a new certification.
• Diversify — Cultivate a wide range of skills rather than limiting yourself to developing only those required for your current role. By diversifying, you ensure that you remain competitive as industries change.
• Focus on more than the money — As you age, having different needs and motivations for your career is perfectly acceptable. For example, perhaps you take a pay cut because you want to work fewer hours in a less demanding role. Prioritizing your changing needs may result in less income, but that need not stop you from progressing.

Combat ageism by treating aging as a process instead of viewing old age as a state of being.

Many people might find it hard to envision themselves as old, as aging is an abstract idea. As a result, you may imagine that, at some future point, you’ll suddenly undergo some transformation and officially become old. Stop viewing old age as a state of being that you will abruptly switch to in a given year or following a pivotal life event. Instead, embrace aging by considering it a “continual process.”

“Aging is about moving continually through time, not about crossing the threshold of a door marked ‘old.”

Research shows that in countries where most people are over the age of 65, perceptions of older people tend to be more negative. For example, in Japan, a new word has emerged to describe what many perceive as older people’s adverse effects on society and the economy: rogai — spelled with the characters for both “old” and “damage.”The language people use in connection with aging can fuel ageist assumptions and pessimistic views of what it means to grow old. For example, referring to older people as “over the hill” focuses on the association between aging and decline. In reality, many aspects of who you are will not go downhill as you age, and not all elements that undergo a decline are significant to your happiness or well-being.

Take an evergreen approach to aging in your own life by adopting six principles.

Embracing the following six principles will help you age better:

1. Educate yourself — Improve your longevity literacy by learning how to protect your health and quality of life over the long term.
2. Be kind to your future you — You have a “duty of care” to your future self. Invest in the resources you’ll need to thrive later on now, including your social networks, finances, health, and a sense of purpose.
3. Redefine aging — Don’t let previous generations’ perceptions of age influence how you perceive your own aging. Instead, define what aging means to you.
4. Stay informed — Pay attention to new health breakthroughs and discoveries, as they may benefit you.
5. Don’t underestimate yourself — Maintain a positive attitude toward aging. Remember that your personal growth doesn’t need to stop and honor the wisdom you’ve accumulated over the years.
6. Invest in yourself — Commit to an evergreen lifestyle, knowing that the investments you make in your health today will benefit you both now and in later life.

About the Author

Andrew J. Scott is an economics professor at London Business School and the co-founder of The Longevity Forum. He’s also the best-selling author of The 100-Year Life.