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More Older People Should Be a Golden Opportunity for the UK

January 29th, 2012 | Add a Comment

As 60 becomes the new 40; 80 the new 60, old age boundaries are pushed ever back. Is there a truly natural lifespan and how can the best be made of it?

‘Hope I die before I get old,’ came from The Who’s 1965 hit, My Generation. It was a youth anthem, suggesting young people should stay young by dying before the onset of old age. But what is old?

Money man Warren Buffett (80), The Queen (84), Dame Judi Dench (76) among others, exude life in old age. Nobody’s any longer too old to achieve new things. A man in India fathered his first child at 94, in December 2010.

The Bible records scarcely credible ripe ages. Job lived 140 years seeing four generations (Job 42;16). Genesis 6:3 says: ‘The Lord said, ‘man: his days shall be 120 years.’ Jehoida died at 130 (2 Chron 24:15); Joshua at 110 (Josh. 24:29); Aaron reached 123 (Num.33:39); Amram, 137 (Ex. 6:20); Jacob, 147 (Gen. 47:28); Abraham, 175 (Gen. 25:7); Isaac, 180 (Gen. 35:28) and Terah 205 (Gen. 11:32).

Genesis lists many long-time survivors: Reu, 207 (11:21); Peleg, 209 (11:19); Eber, 430 (11:17); Shelah, 403 (11:15); Shem, 500 (11:11); Lamech, 777 (5:31) and Noah, 950 years (9:29). Mahalalel survived 895 years, Kenan, 910 (5:14), Seth, 912 (5:8), Jared, 962 (5:17) and Methuselah, 969 (5:27).

Longevity Is Back

At the end of 2010, Britain’s Department for Work and Pensions forecast almost a fifth of Britons becoming centenarians by 2050. About 3 million were under sixteen; 5.5 million aged 16-55, 1.3 million aged 55-65 and 875,000 already over 65 and retired. The increase has been rapid. Since 2000, those receiving 100 year birthday cards from The Queen has risen by 70%, with a ratio of women to men, 6:1.

Life expectancy has risen overall, with newborn girls in 2010 likely to average almost 82 years, and boys nearly 78. Clearly, achievements in healthcare, advances in medicine and technology and improved lifestyles have contributed to modern longevity, compared with short lives in previous generations.

In 2002 Richard Field from the University of Alberta disagreed with Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1660) that described earlier life as ‘nasty, brutish and short.’ Field couldn’t accept average Middle Ages’ life expectancy (mean age at death) as 30-35, and produced evidence that took account of plagues, wars and high infant mortality and included rich and poor.

His views echoed the findings of H.O. Lancaster in Expectations of Life (1990): in the Middle Ages, a person reaching 21 could reach 64 average. There were old people in those societies, at least among the aristocracies. Lancaster suggested that ‘modern societies have largely gained increasing life expectancies by sharply limiting mortality among the young. It simply wasn’t unusual to live to 70 or more.’

In Victorian England, census returns indicated that child mortality did not improve much, but adult mortality did. Life expectancy was around 40 years and in 1871 the average woman was having 5.5 children. Three out of every ten babies died before their first birthday. However, the same proviso as in the Middle Ages should apply about social classes, diseases and infant deaths. Evidence from novels, gravestones, family Bibles suggest there were many older Victorians.

Problems Are Opportunities

According to Geraldine Bedell, in the Daily Telegraph (30 December 2010), while people relish living longer, ‘there is a paradox: the aging population is widely seen as impending disaster.’ Fear of insufficient money to support an imbalanced older/younger populace; pensions not designed for 30, 40 or even 50 years of life after retirement; strains on social care and health service and drains on energy supplies all add up to the beginnings of a media-fed ‘alarmist’ panic.

Celebrities lead, others follow, spending £2.3 billion annually on cosmetic treatments to superficially hold old-age at bay and repair time’s ravages. It’s powerful spending, but often advertisers ignore the ‘grey pound.’ Bedell said older people are lumped together as ‘not very interesting.’ Political parties must be increasingly alive to older votes.

The present neglects the past at its peril. Some jobs cannot be done by geriatrics, of course, but others demand the advantages of experience and wider knowledge. In early 2010 Leeds Building Society announced it was employing a retired English teacher to train younger staff to write acceptable English.

As Britain raises the default retiring age to 70, and then possibly beyond, the need for all employers to harness the commitment of older workers becomes paramount. There may have to be positive discrimination/quotas. It will have to be illegal to discriminate on age as much as race, gender or religious grounds.

British society is rethinking. Bedell asked whether it makes sense ‘to cram all economic activity into the first half of life. Why work our longest hours when our children are young?’ she wondered. She reminded all that the ‘past is not another country, where they do things differently.’ Of course the past is different, but the present is not insulated from it.

She is the founder of Age Bomb, a forum for discussion of the aging population. No ideas discussed there and elsewhere are from the wilder shores of fantasy. In the 1990s the acronym MARILYN arrived: ‘Manning and Recruitment in the Lean Years of the Nineties,’ to describe the shortages of skilled young people coming onto the jobs market. Since then, the population has aged dramatically.

While predictions are chancy, it’s no longer possible to deny the presence of huge numbers in their crowning years. They want more than golf courses and financial products; more than pharmaceuticals to slow the aging process. They will need, demand and ultimately get nothing short of a revolution in how society is run, from transport to jobs; social care to entertainment; family life to social stability.

To get it wrong will be disastrous with ghettoes of silver headed, discarded, technologically-isolated has-beens awaiting death. Get it right, and long life will be more meaningful, satisfying and desirable.

First published on Suite 101, 31st December 2010.

Photo: Old People Should Enjoy Full Lives – Beyond silence