People are living longer lives. In the course of the last century, improvements in diet, sanitation, medical science and healthcare drove a steady increase in longevity, both in Britain and around the world. This change, unique in history, is perhaps the greatest triumph of the postwar period.
And yet longer lives alter the balance of society, as the proportion of older, retired people increases at a faster rate than the working-age population. The question then arises of how to pay for the pensions of the retired. Pensions, after all, are not paid out of a fixed store of cash. They are paid from returns on invested funds and those returns are derived from the productive capacity of the economy as a whole.
Increasing longevity, then, means that fewer working-age people are supporting more pensioners than ever before. As the population continues to age, that imbalance will grow.
This collection of essays and columns confronts the tough questions that arise from an ageing society—questions that successive UK governments have failed to address.
Is the idea of retirement itself fit for retirement, asks Camilla Cavendish. She notes that Japan has already introduced a programme to provide work for retired people and the oldest participant in this scheme is 101 years old. It is not an argument for ending the pension system, but for a greater emphasis by government on the importance of healthy living.
A stout constitution in old age should in theory allow more people to lead productive lives well into their seventies. And why not, asks David Willetts, especially as research shows that a 60-year-old is just as mentally capable of learning new skills as a teenager. As George Magnus writes, Britain’s future economic prospects depend on encouraging more people to work into later life. The only other way to swell the dwindling working-age population would be to allow more immigration, but that option remains a political impossibility—for now, at least.
On p8, Helen Barnard raises the issue of housing. Increasing numbers of pensioners rent their homes, and rent eats up a huge slice of their retirement income. What’s more, few homes are built with older people in mind. Perhaps that’s down to the persistence of ageism, suggests Sarah Harper. It’s important that the older population is not seen as a problem. The professional experience of older people is of great value—we should draw on it.
The idea of retirement is attractive. But should a fit, healthy and mentally alert 70-year-old really be expected to retreat from the world simply on account of age? The answer that emerges from this collection of articles is no. Older people have much to contribute, to their own wellbeing and to society as a whole.
