So You Want to Live to 100? More of Us Will, and Here Is What Life Might Look Like
The implications are enormous
If your children happened to be born since the year 2000 in developed countries, they will most likely live to be 100, and they will be healthier than elderly people in previous generations, according to a recent article in the medical journal The Lancet.
The implications are enormous for everything from retirement planning and health care costs to new models for the workplace and innovative approaches to education. As Olivia Mitchell, professor of insurance and risk management, states: "This is a demographic revolution the likes of which we have never seen before on earth."
Add to this observation the fact that economists have trouble predicting what fourth quarter GDP will be, let alone a vision of the world several generations out, and it becomes clear that this latest research will pose unique challenges for governments around the world. "If people knew they would live to be 100, they might want to organize their lives very differently," says James W. Vaupel, a co-author of the Lancet study and founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. "It means we will need radical changes in public policy."
