Longevity is one of the great economic and scientific achievements of the last century, but it risks becoming a new source of deep social division. Today, it is no longer enough to focus on how long we will live: the real question is who will be able to live longer in good health and who, on the other hand, will accumulate, over the course of their lives, disadvantages that are bound to result in additional years of frailty.

This was the central theme of the international conference ‘Inequalities in Longevity: Determining Factors, Frailty and Responses to an Underestimated Challenge’, organised by the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice on 3 and 4 July, which brought together 21 economists, demographers, doctors and public policy experts to address an issue set to have a profound impact on healthcare, pension and welfare systems.

Daniele Franco, the Foundation’s scientific director, opened the proceedings by summarising the starting point for the discussion. “Increased life expectancy represents a crucial challenge for our societies,” he said, adding that it is “a triumph of science and the economy” which, however, risks becoming divisive if not addressed “with a critical eye and an awareness of the demographic, social, cultural, ethical and economic implications”.

The view shared by the speakers is that longevity is no longer merely a biological issue: it is an economic and social phenomenon, shaped by education, income, employment, environmental quality, preventative care and access to treatment.

There is no single form of longevity

The first point that emerged very clearly concerns precisely moving beyond the idea of ‘average’ longevity: talking about national life expectancy risks obscuring enormous disparities between social groups. The analyses presented show that differences in survival are not random: those with higher levels of education, higher incomes and better working conditions tend not only to live longer, but above all to spend many more years without functional limitations.

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