We are living in a world where the focus is on youth and a society that seldom pays much attention to older people. The old look out of style; act a little funny; they do not dress properly the way young people do, and they are from another psychological era. We need to ask a question about what it’s like to look at life after 80-90 years. What’s it like to think back over the past and ask yourself what were the regrets you have had as you aged? Clearly times are changing.
Throughout most of human existence people haven’t expected to live long lives. But now we are beginning to think that there is more possibility of living to an old-old age. On the other side, the birth rates have been dropping. After the baby boomers came along, people started having smaller families, fewer kids. The birth rate in the United States has been cut in half, so there are only about 55 births per 1000. You look at those two issues together, and what you see is that the United States is shifting its center of gravity to older adults. Therefore, businesses and governments need to get off their youth focus and begin to realize not only that there are going to be more older people, but also that they’re going to be a different kind of older person. What are the products, services, and policies that are needed to accommodate this phenomenon?
Most people are uncertain about who they might be as they get older in the years to come. There are not a lot of good role models for 80- and 90-year-olds. We are in a stage of life that’s emerging, that’s new. We often think of “new” as being what the young people will do next or what new technology is going to happen, but not “What are 65-year-olds thinking about?” or “How they’re going to reinvent themselves?” or “How much money does a 75-year-old need if they’re going to live to be 95 or 100?” What happens when somebody finds themselves weary of their career at the retirement age of 65 but they still have a lot of life in them? In addition, how are people going to pay for their longevity since they will have 20-25 more years without a paying job?
Another major issue as we become elders in the new world is that we have not set up medical and health care systems to produce healthy longevity. It may just be that we created a health care system for the acute problems of young people. Thanks to the breakthroughs of the 20th century, we’ve been able to put diseases like diphtheria, cholera, typhoid, syphilis, and polio to bed. But now we have all these chronic degenerative diseases as we age, and studies have shown that people are most frightened about cognitive health, such as Alzheimer’s disease. We need to step up our research efforts and find ways to end old-age-related diseases and not just produce more caregivers for the chronically ill elders.
One of our main issues today is how we get our health span to match our lifespan. What people would like is to live to 80 or 90, or maybe even 100 years, which is my goal, and be reasonably healthy, vital, and able to contribute throughout those years. The United States has not done a very good job of that. We are 50th in the world when it comes to how long we live. There are 49 countries that have a higher life expectancy than we do.
But when it comes to health span, how many years do we live with reasonably good health? We are only 68th in the world. The average American only will live an average life expectancy of 78.4 years, while comparable countries live to 82.5. The United States has the lowest life expectancy among large, wealthy countries, while it far outspends those countries on healthcare that have longer life expectancies. We will spend the last 10 or 15 years of our lives in declining health, and that’s not what anybody wants. We have spent hundreds of years trying to make longevity happen, and now it’s happening, but we must figure out how to do it right.
How people are going to pay for their longevity is an important issue, but it is not being dealt with except with programs like Social Security. In addition, as already discussed, we are not really capable of having an appropriate health care system to produce healthy longevity. Who can we blame for this? It can clearly be that we created an acute healthcare system, and now we need to incorporate chronic illnesses.
Without fresh thinking and innovative new solutions, the ensuing age wave could cause a misalignment of many aspects of society, such as pandemics of degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. We need to activate a non-ageist longevity marketplace such that we prolong health with lifespan. Our later years are prolonged with illnesses and suffering. Today, an average American will spend 12.4 years (16 percent of their lifespan) living with a disability, pain, or disease. As a result, we need to take action to address unhealthy aging.
As a result, we need to focus on healthy aging by educating our health professionals, incorporating AI to help with research, education, and service to provide quality health outcomes, providing health prevention and wellness, and providing appropriate living environments that are accessible and social. What better way to add life to years?
