The Longevity Imperative: Building a Better Society for Healthier, Longer Lives

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Alongside climate change and inequality one of the biggest challenges facing the world today paradoxically arises from one of the greatest achievements of the twentieth century. For the first time in human history, thanks to advances in medical science and public health, the majority of people will live into their 70s and 80s and there are more people alive aged over 60 than under 5.

Rather than celebrating this extraordinary achievement, however, we see an ageing society as a threat, we worry about a growing care burden and the challenges of financing these longer lives, we fear a shrinking economy and a society riven by intergenerational conflict. These concerns are all entirely legitimate if we don't make urgent and major reforms to every aspect of society and the economy.

Evergreen provides a roadmap for these changes. It argues that we have the potential to tackle these issues to create a healthier, happier and more productive society in the future. In part 1, Scott outlines the health and demographic trends which have brought us to this point, establishes the key myths and misunderstandings which have clouded our approach so far, and identifies the key issues which need to be addressed. Part 2 outlines the longevity agenda and focuses on the science of living longer and healthier and the transformations needed for our health systems, economy and personal finances to be able to sustain these changes. The final part looks at the social, political and philosophical issues around delivering an evergreen society.

Author Bio

Andrew J Scott is a Professor of Economics at London Business School. He has previously held posts at Harvard University, London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he was a Fellow of All Souls. He was the Non-Executive Director for the UK's Financial Services Authority from 2009-2013. He is currently on the advisory board of the UK's Office for Budget Responsibility, the Cabinet Office Honours Committee (Science and Technology), co-founder of The Longevity Forum, a member of the WEF council on Healthy Ageing and Longevity and a consulting scholar at Stanford University's Center on Longevity. Andrew is also the recipient of an ESRC grant for researching the economic longevity dividend.

Andrew is the co-author (with Lynda Gratton) of The 100 Year Life (Bloomsbury, 2016) which has sold 700,000 copies globally and has been published in English, Chinese, Estonian, French, German, Greek, Japanese (including 2 Manga editions and an abbreviate version), Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Taiwanese, Turkish and Thai. It was runner up in the Japanese Business Book of the Year 2018 and the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year in 2016 and the winner of the KnowSquare (Spain) Business Book of the year in 2017. The New Long Life was published by Bloomsbury in May 2020 and rights have been sold in Chinese, Danish, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Russian and Greek.