A Different Rhythm to Life

According to the Lancet researchers, the gain of about 30 years in life expectancy in Western Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand -- and even more in Japan, Spain and Italy -- "stands out as one of the most important accomplishments of the 20th century." Furthermore, most babies born since 2000 in these countries will "celebrate their 100th birthdays if the present yearly growth in life expectancy continues through the 21st century." The authors expect that it will: "Continued progress in the longest living populations suggests that we are not close to a limit, and [a] further rise in life expectancy seems likely."

Given that individuals over the coming decade may routinely expect to work well into their 70s and 80s, what kind of environment can they look forward to? "The good news is that the world of work is changing by itself" in ways that will make it more receptive to older employees, says Peter Cappelli, director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources. "It's already easier to work at a distance, easier to telecommute.... The physical demands [of many jobs] are falling, commitments are shorter-term, outsourcing of all kinds is on the rise and there is more contract work -- all of which makes it simpler for people to come in and out of the workplace, at least in principle..... The question is, to what extent will employers actually embrace older workers and incorporate more flexibility with respect to schedules, less supervision and more empowerment?"

One potential hang-up centers on the fact that older workers, as they stay on the job longer, are likely to be increasingly supervised by younger managers, says Cappelli. In addition to harboring "a kind of tacit discrimination against older employees, young people also have real concerns as to how they go about managing somebody who has more experience than they do. That's a challenge not many people intuitively understand how to deal with." Vaupel concurs, adding that as people work more years of their lives, but for fewer hours per week, the workplace will need to "become friendlier and more accepting of older workers" by, for example, accommodating their desires to work out of, or near, their homes, and by changing potentially hostile attitudes among younger workers toward older employees. Several studies have shown that "in some workplace environments, younger people try to force older people out. That has to change," he says.

The authors of the Lancet article -- titled "Ageing Populations: The Challenges Ahead" and led by Kaare Christensen, a professor at the Danish Ageing Research Centre at the University of Southern Denmark -- suggest another potential change in both the employment landscape and people's lifestyles. "Improvements in health and functioning along with shifting of employment from jobs that need strength to jobs needing knowledge imply that a rising proportion of people in their 60s and 70s are capable of contributing to the economy. Because many [of these] people would prefer part-time work to full-time work, a [growth] in jobs that need 15, 20 or 25 hours of work a week seems likely."

And if elderly people increasingly choose to work part-time, then more opportunities for part-time work might open up for young people as well. The 20th century, the article states, was "a century of redistribution of income. The 21st century could be a century of redistribution of work" in which employment would be spread "more evenly across populations and over the ages of life. Individuals could combine work, education, leisure and child rearing in varying amounts at different ages."

Gabriele Doblhammer-Reiter, executive director of the Rostock Center for the Study of Demographic Change in Rostock, Germany, and a co-author of the article along with Christensen, Vaupel and colleague Ronald Rau, sees this potential redistribution of work as a positive outcome. "If older people work part-time, could young people work part-time as well?" she asks. "If that is possible, it would be wonderful because at the moment, the majority of working hours [occur] at times when we have so many other responsibilities, such as raising a family." Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard sees organizations allowing employees to reprioritize different aspects of their jobs at different times -- perhaps concentrating on tasks or specialties that no longer require the same expertise that was needed earlier on -- or perhaps going back to school and retooling. It is especially important to keep up with the technology skills demanded in one's job or profession. Older workers, she says, "have a wealth of experience and breadth of knowledge that is impressive and can be extraordinarily valuable. That has to be balanced with the need to remain current."

Predictions about the future of the workplace depend on the individual country. "The U.S. differs from Japan and Europe in that the U.S. still has a fairly young labor force, in part because of high birth rates and a large number of immigrants," says Vaupel. "But in Europe and Japan, there will be a real shortage of workers in the coming decades. This means that companies will be trying to keep older people in the workforce and encourage retirees to come back. Managers are already beginning to think about how to ensure some reeducation among older workers" -- just as younger people frequently receive on-the-job training to help them sharpen existing skills and acquire new ones.

Mitchell goes a step further. "The real challenge of living to be 100 will be to systematically weave financial literacy into elementary, middle and high school programs," she says. "We need to get people to think differently about investing in themselves, in their human capital. Individuals will need to assemble a tool kit that will get them not only a first job or prepare them for a 20-year career, but help them fashion several different 20-year careers over a lifetime." This will require a very different approach to education, she adds, one that will "get people back to school periodically and teach them to keep learning, instead of just having knowledge frozen" at one point in their lives.  

Indeed, her biggest concern about the new mortality projections is "the very difficult time that the average worker has understanding basic economics, much less longevity risk. Life expectancy now is close to 80, yet less than 20% of the American population in their 50s has even tried to design a retirement plan. If you add another 20 years on top of that, then people need to become much more [knowledgeable] about saving and investing for retirement."