MULTI-PHASE LIFE WILL NEED WORK

KATRINA GRACE KELLY
FEBRUARY 15, 2020
The Australian

Seventy is the new 50, my doctor said this week, glibly, but here is something that makes his statement ring true. Consider the race for the US presidency and the ages of the big names involved: Donald Trump, 73; Elizabeth Warren, 70; Michael Bloomberg, 78; William Weld, 74; Joe Biden, 77; and Bernie Sanders, 78. 

Whether you think about the corporate world, politics or just look to television and popular culture, older people are setting the world on fire; and consequently our picture of ageing is being redrawn continually.

We are all ageing, this is true, but every year our lives are getting longer, too. Every 10 years during the past 200, Western life expectancy has expanded by more than two. Consequently, while I can now expect to live into my 90s, by the time I reach that age further advances may mean I can expect to make it to 105.

If all goes to plan, this column could run until 2075.

According to the authors of Broken Limits to Life Expectancy, a paper written for Science Magazine in 2002, a child born today has a 50 per cent chance of living to be over 105, whereas a child born more than a century ago had less than 1 per cent chance of doing that.

Today’s ­20-year-old has a 50 per cent chance of living to over 100, a 40-year-old has a 50 per cent chance of making it to 95, and a 60-year-old has a 50 per cent chance of making over 90. And every year the life expectancy of all these people continues to rise by between two and three months.

This is partly why the federal government’s retirement review couldn’t come at a better time. We all — as policymakers and as individuals — must think more deeply about our expectations of retirement. We must open our minds to new ways of living and increase our appreciation of the senior people in our community.

Our long lives should be lived well, our work should be enjoyed and, crucially, we must work out how to fund the period when we don’t want to work at all.

The 2016 bestselling book The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity has to be compulsory reading for all those engaged in the topic.

Authors Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott explain that longer life expectancies mean that our traditional three-stage view of life — education, career, retirement — won’t serve us well in the future.

Not that long ago, retirement was basically a 10-year period between giving up work and death. So if the retirement age remains fixed and life expectancy increases, the period between will stretch out significantly. This knowledge can make us feel “condemned to work forever, knowing we can’t afford to stop”.

In this scenario, an extended three-stage life can feel like “a curse”; it is easy to see ourselves old and decrepit, working longer or making do with a smaller retirement income.

In most public discussions on the social and economic consequences of longevity, the topic is one of “frailty and infirmity, of an Alzheimer’s epidemic, of rising medical costs and a looming crisis”.

This is a negative view because with medical advances, including preventive medicine, health promotion and education, a “significant compression of morbidity will occur”; the chronic illnesses associated with ageing will start later and will be better treated or even cured, so our quality of life will be better for longer.

With good health, a long life is a gift and not a curse at all.

The authors cite data from the US that gives us cause for hope. Twenty thousand people were studied for mobility and functionality. Between 1984 and 2004, the number of people aged between 85 and 89 who were classified as disabled fell from 22 per cent to 12 per cent; for those aged over 95, it fell from 52 per cent to 31 per cent.

The book argues that the “structuring and sequencing of time” in our lives is effectively a “social construct”. What has been constructed, then, can be torn down and rebuilt.

Providing governments and society undertake major change, we can, with planning, move away from the three-stage life and instead have a “multi-stage life” with “different structures, alternative sequences and a redesigned social construct”.

A multi-stage life means people routinely working into their 70s and 80s, with enthusiasm and enjoyment, and a greater level of control over their work, when, where and how they perform it. This coincides with new technology and a move away from traditional office-based employment, which could “come to look ridiculously traditional and expensive”.

A multi-phase life will comprise periods in and out of the workforce, transitioning periods between jobs, study and self-employment, and there will be greater investment in intangible assets such as health, vitality, family and friendships.

Transitioning to a multi-phase life will require effort, planning and putting yourself out of your comfort zone. Importantly, it involves work of some sort or another as long as health allows.

The rewards will be there for those who strive, and the alternative — a long, impoverished retirement — is hardly appealing.