“Adapting to longer lives is as crucial as adapting to AI or climate change”

Our behaviours, policies, cultures and institutions have not adapted to the length of life we now expect. When only a minority lived into their eighties and nineties, systems were designed differently. Today the majority do, but we have not created a system for that reality. The opportunity is to ensure longer lives are healthier, more productive and more engaged, so they support growth rather than create a pensions or health crisis.

No country has a full solution, but some are experimenting. Japan stands out: it has one of the highest life expectancies and lowest birth rates, yet growth per person remains resilient. It supports older workers through flexible employment beyond retirement age and by using robotics in more physical jobs, showing how longevity can be turned into an economic asset.

The key channel is investing in the human capital of older people. That means lifelong learning and health systems focused on keeping people healthy so they can work longer. It also means creating age-friendly jobs with more flexibility. Employment starts to fall from around age 50 due to health, skills and ageism. Preventing that decline is essential for sustaining economic growth.

People welcome longer lives only if they remain healthy. The benefits fall quickly when extra years are spent in poor health. Prevention therefore matters for individuals and the economy. For instance, if you have a heart attack at 50, you are far more likely to leave work, and it is difficult to return. As populations age, health increasingly becomes a macroeconomic issue.

The opportunity is to ensure longer lives are healthier, more productive and more engaged, so they support growth rather than create a pensions or health crisis.

 Adapting to longer lives is as crucial as adapting to AI or climate change. Many responses focus on saving more, but the bigger challenge is to earn more over a longer lifetime. That requires working longer and moving away from a simple three-stage life. Instead, we will see multi-stage lives with career breaks, retraining and varying patterns of work and income.

Pensions were built around education, work and retirement. Current reforms often adjust parameters within that model but longer lives require more flexibility. That demands more flexible accumulation and decumulation, new forms of “living insurance” and closer integration of wealth and health management.

 Many responses focus on saving more, but the bigger challenge is to earn more over a longer lifetime.

Longer lives mean more time, but not all of it will be spent working in a single career. People will work for longer but also take breaks to retrain, switch careers or care for others. Leisure will not be concentrated only in retirement. Firms will need to rethink hiring, reduce age bias and create age-friendly roles with flexibility, autonomy and less physical strain.

 Firms will need to rethink hiring, reduce age bias and create age-friendly roles with flexibility, autonomy and less physical strain.

How we age is only partly genetic; most is driven by behaviour and environment. That creates opportunity but also risk. If access to healthy lifestyles, skills and prevention is uneven, longer lives could increase inequality. Policies must focus on healthy life expectancy, support transitions later in life and prioritise prevention so gains from longevity are widely shared.