The Longevity Imperative: Building a Better Society for Healthier, Longer Lives

"Andrew Scott is the economist who was the co-author (with Lynda Gratton) a few years ago of The 100-Year Life . This is the idea that people being born now, and indeed in the last 10 or 15 years, have a greater chance of living to 100. It’s about how that affects how they as individuals behave, as well as how companies, policymakers and society handle that. In this book, Scott takes it a step further, laying out what he calls an evergreen agenda, which is the way various institutions and individuals can improve their ability to live well into long life. One of the things that he takes on here, which was raised in the earlier book as well, is the danger that if you simply allow this demographic change to happen without taking any action, then we risk having a longer life that is actually no better, indeed worse, than the shorter, healthier life that might have gone before. What you want is to live a better life both medically, but also in the way the economics is set up so that you can continue to make a difference well into healthy old age. In that sense, it’s a policy book. I find this topic fascinating. I was always surprised that The 100-Year Life didn’t spawn lots more books about this challenge. There are some, and there’s a lot of work to which he refers—of people trying to live forever: this whole obsession with immortality is still out there, and he cites some of the more eccentric examples. But he points out that there’s a risk that you simply live forever as an invalid, unable to do anything, which is not a great outcome. He’s pointing to a more realistic option, which policymakers might be able to help shape. There’s lots of practical stuff in there, including suggestions about how you deal with this overhang. We’ve already got situations like Japan, a top-heavy society with older people whose retirement is not going to be funded by a relatively dwindling number of younger people. Those are issues that he addresses in the book. It’s ultimately optimistic, because he’s saying this is within reach, but we have to start acting now."