Genetic research is opening a door to life spans of 120 healthy, active years or more - possibly much more. What we don't know is who will walk through.
Your world is about to change in the most fundamental and dramatic way possible: you're going to live longer than you expect, perhaps much longer. But when I ask someone whether they'd like to live well beyond 100, they almost always say no. We fear old age more than we fear being dead, and we're afraid that as we grow older, we'll get steadily more feeble, becoming a burden to ourselves and those around us. But that is not the way it would be, because we're talking about being hale and healthy well beyond age 100, with old age compressed or even eliminated prior to death.
Since the beginning of this century, life expectancy has risen by an average of four months per calendar year in North America. I expect that this will continue, if not accelerate, which means that my life expectancy, for instance, will be to at least age 88, not 78 as current mortality tables indicate. But startling breakthroughs in genetic research are causing some researchers to say that we will see a 50% increase in human life expectancy over the next 20 to 30 years. That would increase my life expectancy to age 132, 84 years from now in 2082.
So far the things I've been talking about have been based on the possible consequences of known research. Now I'd like to step into the realm of pure speculation, based on the history of medical discovery, and the current pace of scientific investigation. Think how far we've come in the last 84 years since 1914, and consider the remarkable new research tools emerging in genetic engineering, molecular chemistry, and mathematical biology. It's not hard to believe that the developments of the future will outstrip those of the past.
We will be able to cure or prevent diseases and conditions like colonic and breast cancer, Alzheimer's disease, muscular sclerosis, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, asthma, and a wide range of other afflictions that are beyond our abilities today. We'll be able to halt, or even reverse the aging process. In fact, if we get much beyond 120, there may be nothing to prevent us from becoming effectively immortal - except for accidents, violence, suicide, and, perhaps most importantly, the inability to afford the treatments to prolong life. I doubt if governments will pay for our immortality.
Which brings me to the implications of longer life. If we remain hale and healthy well beyond the age of 100, it will change how we think of ourselves and our lives. If you're 175, and your grandson is 115, for instance, and you both look roughly the same age, won't that change how you look at each other? Especially if you're competing for the same jobs?
And how long will you work for a living? Even if we live to only(?!) 130 years, then 65 becomes the halfway point in our lives - the beginning of middle age, and not the beginning of old age. I looked at how much money we will need to save if we live well beyond 100, and the results surprised me. In one example, a 45 year old with an established retirement savings program would have to save only $700 a year more to finance an additional 200 years of retirement because of the dramatic effects of compound interest. But do you want to be retired for more than 230 years?
So what should you do about all this today? First of all, you should plan on living longer than you expect. You should, at the very least, plan on having an extra third of a year tacked onto your life for every year of current life expectancy you now have. You should also allow for the possibility that you might live much longer than that, and watch research results carefully for signs that things might be tending that way. (See 'Book Reviews' on p. 4)
If you run an organization, you should be thinking about the implications of a workforce composed of older employees, and what that means for the policies you follow and the way you conduct your affairs. Think about a steadily growing segment of your customers or members who are what we would today call 'mature.' Consider about how this incredible demographic shift will affect government policy in foreign affairs, employment legislation, education, health care, taxation, and just about everything else, and how those policy shifts will affect you. Think about where people will want to live if they are going to live longer, and what that will do to real estate markets, cities and small towns.
You should, in short, consider a future in which the single most important assumption about our society changes.
© Copyright, Incremax Financial Research, October 1998.
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