THE NEW OLD AGE

THE "GOLDEN YEARS" ARE GETTING AN UPGRADE

- BY ALICE PARK

LIFE ONCE FOLLOWED A FAMILIAR pattern. You'd go to school, get a job, build a family, and then, sometime in your 60s, retire, enjoying life for a few years until you grew too frail to live on your own. Then you might move in with family or check into a facility where you'd spend your "golden years."

A crucial part of that blueprint was an unsaid but universal assumption: that for the vast majority of people, life would not extend far beyond their 70s. That was based on the average lifespan when this still dominant picture of an American life arc was first formed, and it underpinned everything-from how people planned their careers to the way companies designed their pension plans. Yet now it looks like a relic.

Today, life expectancy in the U.S. stands at 79 years, compared with 68 in 1950. The upshot: 60 million Americans are now 65 or older-which is roughly equal to the combined populations of Spain and Portugal. A similar trend is playing out globally, with an estimated 2.1 billion people—or 1 in 5—projected to be 60 or older by 2050. Already, a third of all people in Japan are in that older age range; 60 more countries are expected to hit that ratio in the next 25 years.

More than a century’s worth of scientific and social progress means that most of us are now more productive and more useful to society for far longer than in the past.

“What we have is a fundamental change in the age structure of society,” says John Rowe, professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University’s Aging Center, referring to the way we're aging—and also the way we're creating young people, with birth rates plummeting in most countries. Globally, fertility levels have dropped below the so-called population replacement rate of just over two births per woman.