WHEN Poles want to wish somebody well, they wish them a hundred years of life. This is a charming prospect, as long as the chances of it coming to pass are vanishingly small. But once it starts to look as though it might actually happen, you may think that people should be careful what they wish for you.
As Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott make arrestingly clear, it will take a lot more than good wishes to make sure that a hundred years is a blessing, not a curse.
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Life expectancies have been rising by up to three months a year since 1840, and there is no sign of that flattening. Gratton and Scott draw on a to show that if the trend continues, more than half the babies born in wealthier countries since 2000 may reach their 100th birthdays.
With a few simple, devastating strokes, Gratton and Scott show that under the current system it is almost certain you won鈥檛 be able to save enough to fund several decades of decent retirement. For example, if your life expectancy is 100, you want a pension that is 50 per cent of your final salary, and you save 10 per cent of your earnings each year, they calculate that you won鈥檛 be able to retire till your 80s. People with 100-year life expectancies must recognise they are in for the long haul, and make an early start arranging their lives accordingly.
But how to go about this? Gratton and Scott advance the idea of a multistage life, with repeated changes of direction and attention. Material and intangible assets will need upkeep, renewal or replacement. Skills will need updating, augmenting or discarding, as will networks of friends and acquaintances. Earning will be interspersed with learning or self-reflection. As the authors warn, recreation will have to become 鈥渞e-creation鈥�.
鈥淢ore than half the babies born in wealthier countries since 2000 may reach their 100th birthdays鈥�
Clearly this will be expensive. As well as saving for retirement, people will need to pay for self-reflection phases and education. If you are, say, a hairdresser, you won鈥檛 need to worry too much about skills becoming obsolete. But you probably won鈥檛 be able to afford much self-renewal. Gratton and Scott point out the twofold inequality of lengthening lifespans: the rich live longer than the poor, and the better-off are better off in all the resources needed to make increasing longevity a blessing not a burden.
Even the better-off will mostly be stretched by the demands of the multistage life, though, and so the need for a good partner will loom ever larger. Although two can鈥檛 live as cheaply as one, they can live more cheaply together than apart. Crucially, too, partners will look to each other for financial cover when not earning.
There鈥檚 a contradiction here that the authors don鈥檛 really acknowledge. The 100-year life demands constant review and readiness to change one鈥檚 work and one鈥檚 self, but relies heavily on commitment to one鈥檚 partner. Yet people already review their relationships, resulting in changes of partner. They may need to reverse that policy.
Perhaps Gratton and Scott felt their groundbreaking book should skirt some of the tougher terrain, so as not to discourage readers who aren鈥檛 ready to think as boldly as they do.
The most significant absence is about ageing itself. Although they note that financial literacy declines with age, for the most part they write as though people think and feel much the same way whatever age they are. Yet recent illustrates that younger and older people have different incentives. Researchers at University College London, for example, found that older people don鈥檛 respond as strongly to rewards as younger ones. They think that may be because the 鈥渞eward鈥� neurotransmitter, dopamine, declines by up to 10 per cent every decade.
If they are still working, older people will be competing with younger people who have more motivation in their synapses. Hopefully those younger people will have the foresight to hang on to their rewards so they can pass them on to their less motivated, less competent older selves. The 100-year life will need the old to be young, and the young old.
Bloomsbury
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淎 hundred and counting鈥�
