Experts say that if you want to age healthily, you should plan for it. That's what I've tried to do: I played in a soccer league well into my 60s, and I was a regular runner. Those activities kept me fit and active at the time. Now, in my 70s, I hope they continue to pay dividends. Healthy aging is something the Milken Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, has long focused on. Ten years ago, it published a series of essays...
Today’s youth will increasingly age into a world that was not designed for their longer lives. So why is longevity still approached as a matter for older adults? Economies around the world are ageing as a result of falling birthrates and rising lifespans. In fact, over 70% of people worldwide already live in a country whose population is projected to peak before the end of the century. The result is a major transformation at both the societal and individual levels. At...
Asia is rapidly ageing for two main reasons: People are living longer, and birth rates are falling. According to the World Economic Forum's Longevity Dividend report, co-authored with Marsh, the global over-65 population will grow by 53%, while the working-age population will rise by a mere 13% by 2040. Asia's ageing population is no longer just a HR prerogative — it is now a board-level agenda. The report estimates what inaction could cost the world: $645 billion in lost productivity...
People who naturally stay awake late at night may face a higher risk of receiving a disability pension before reaching retirement age, a new study suggests. Researchers found that evening-type people had about a 70% higher risk than morning types. However, the finding does not mean that being a night owl directly causes disability. What did the study on night people find? Researchers in Finland followed 5,679 adults for 12 years, using information collected in 2012 and national pension records through...
By Sebastian Köhne I study life-expectancy inequality in a Mirrleesian life-cycle framework with pension-linked fiscal externalities and private retirement saving. Heterogeneous longevity affects optimal redistribution by changing both the expected fiscal cost of pension benefits and the mapping from disposable income into social marginal welfare. I derive an ABCD optimal tax formula that incorporates these efficiency and equity effects. Calibrated to the U.S. economy, the model implies that accounting for heterogeneous longevity lowers optimal marginal tax rates, particularly at the...
More than a third (36 per cent) of people do not believe their pension will provide a comfortable retirement, while growing numbers are unsure whether their savings are on track, according to Trafalgar House’s 2026 Trust & Confidence Survey. The survey found that confidence in retirement outcomes remains low, with just 24.4 per cent agreeing that their pension will enable them to live comfortably in retirement, down from 26.3 per cent in 2025. The proportion who strongly agree fell from 6.8...
A growing number of retirees face a challenge previous generations rarely had to consider: their retirement may last as long as their working lives. For South Africans retiring in their sixties, a retirement spanning 35 or even 40 years is no longer an extreme scenario. While longer life expectancy is undoubtedly positive, it fundamentally changes how investors need to think about saving, investing and drawing an income in retirement. The question is no longer whether you can afford to retire. It...
Retirement requires a fundamental shift – to our lifestyles, finances, and mindset. After a lifetime of saving, we shift to decades of spending. This is a change that doesn’t come naturally for many of us. As we live longer, with retirement now spanning thirty years for the average Australian, knowing how much money we will need to fund our post-work years has become a mounting challenge. With 250,000 Australians stepping into retirement every year, it is imperative to understand how...
Living longer used to feel like the whole point. More birthdays, more time with people you love, more years to do the things that matter. But a new analysis tracking 204 countries over three decades is asking a harder question: are those extra years actually good ones? Researchers found that while life expectancy has risen significantly around the world, more of those added years are being spent managing chronic illness, pain, or disability. It's a shift that changes how we think about healthspan versus...
By Louis Compton, Magdalena Walbaum, David R. Sinclair, Gemma Spiers, Barbara Hanratty, Raphael Wittenberg Background: The UK aimed to prolong the working lives of women by introduced a policy raising women’s state pension age (SPA) from 60 to 66. The impact of involuntary prolonged employment on individual’s health and well-being is debated. We explore how the well-being, mental and physical health of the women impacted by the policy has been affected. Methods: We used data from the first 12-waves of the...
