May 2026
06May

IMANI Analyst: Ghana Pension Funds Can Finance the Energy Sector

As Ghana confronts the long-term challenge of building a stable, reliable, and affordable energy sector, a policy analyst at IMANI Africa is proposing an unconventional source of capital: the billions of cedis quietly accumulating in the country’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 pension funds. John Sitsofe Mensah, Associate for Technology Policy and Innovation at IMANI’s Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (CSTI), argues that Ghana has been sitting on a largely untapped financing opportunity while continuing to court foreign...

May 6, 2026
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06May

Early retirement may be contributing to Gen X’s cognitive decline

While economists sound alarms about Gen Z unemployment, new research points to a quieter crisis: Gen X workers retiring years before 65—and paying a steep cognitive price for it. About 35% of workers who have been unemployed for more than 24 weeks are over the age of 55, according to an April 2025 analysis. Over the last 35 years, the retirement age for men in particular has gotten younger, with about half of retirees saying they made the choice to...

May 6, 2026
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April 2026
24Apr

How to live a longer and happier life, according to science

You want to be happier. You want to feel more fulfilled. You want to live a longer, healthier life. Hold that thought. Lewis Terman, a Stanford University psychologist, was a pioneer in I.Q. testing. His revisions of the Stanford-Binet test helped it become a widespread tool for measuring general intelligence. In 1921, he identified 1,500 children who had scored 135 or higher on the test and began one of the longest longitudinal studies ever conducted. (The New York Times calls Terman and his study of “Termites,” as the kids called themselves, the “grandfather of...

April 24, 2026
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23Apr

Can Nigeria’s N27 Trillion Pension Assets Rescue Its Aailing Health Sector?

Nigeria’s pension fund assets experienced an unprecedented 20% surge in 2025, reaching a total of N27.3 trillion (approximately KES 2.35 trillion) by the end of December. While this growth represents a significant triumph for the National Pension Commission (PenCom), a critical debate is now emerging: can these vast resources be diverted from financing government deficits to fixing Nigeria’s chronic healthcare financing gap? Currently, the overwhelming majority of these assets—over 65%—are invested in Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) securities. While these...

April 23, 2026
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15Apr

Why climate action matters for healthy longevity

Global life expectancy has more than doubled in just over a century, from around 32 years in 1900 to about 73 years today. This is the result of cleaner water, better nutrition, vaccines and more resilient health systems. But these gains now face a slower-burning threat: A rapidly warming planet. Climate change has long been associated with risks such as sea-level rise and biodiversity loss. Now it raises deeper questions of whether future generations will live not only longer lives, but healthier ones...

April 15, 2026
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March 2026
27Mar

How a Healthy Mind-Set Influences Longevity

Nan Niland, 72, volunteers about 15 hours a week at a home goods pantry. “I needed to feel like I was doing something other than pleasing myself,” Ms. Niland said.Tony Luong For The New York Times A few qualities, including a sense of purpose, seem to have real benefits — especially as you age. Nan Niland, 72, worked as a dentist for 40 years. “It really was my self-definition,” she said. “Probably too much.” When she retired in 2020, she settled into...

March 27, 2026
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05Mar

Yale study challenges notion that aging means decline, finds many older adults improve over time

Aging in later life is often portrayed as a steady slide toward physical and cognitive decline. But a new study by scientists at Yale University suggests an alternate narrative — that older individuals can and do improve over time and their mindset toward aging plays a major part in their success. Analyzing more than a decade of data from a large, nationally representative study of older Americans, lead author Becca R. Levy, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at...

March 5, 2026
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February 2026
26Feb

Forever Chemicals Linked to Faster Aging in Middle-Aged Men, Study Finds

A new study shows that exposure to two specific 'forever chemicals' may accelerate biological aging, especially in middle-aged men. These chemicals – PFNA (perfluorononanoic acid) and PFOSA (perfluorooctanesulfonamide) – are just two of the thousands of 'forever chemicals', or to use the more technical term, PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). Used widely since the 1940s and 1950s, PFAS are found in raincoats, upholstery, non-stick pans, food packaging, firefighting foams, and much more. This vast range of synthetic substances was specifically designed to be durable. They...

February 26, 2026
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17Feb

Brain expert recommends learning new skills, taking on new challenges for healthy aging

When her husband of more than half a century died Maureen Caraco was left with a gaping hole in her life. Despite being in her early 80s and struggling to navigate her grief, she enrolled in a law degree. "I was pretty much at a loss as to what to do," Ms Caraco said. "It was really fantastic going to university, being with people who had the same purpose in life and the same interest, and I just felt so at home...

February 17, 2026
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03Feb

How aging changes rats’ social choices and what that may mean for healthy aging

The loss of social connectedness as people age increases the odds of cognitive-related disorders and can worsen health outcomes in older populations. But is there a direct relationship between social behavior and cognition? Subhadeep Dutta Gupta, Peter Rapp, and colleagues, from the National Institute on Aging, developed a rat model to probe social cognition in the aging brain. As presented in their eNeuro paper, the researchers used 169 young and aged male rats to discover that while older rats were as social as younger...

February 3, 2026
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