There’s a lot discussion these days, as boomers hit retirement age, about how boomers have a whole other phase of life to look forward to, a whole new shot, time for second careers, and so on. Many more years than their parents or grandparents of serious living. All such upbeat talk starts with the premise that there are many more final years than there used to be. Until recently, a generation or two ago, the story goes, there just wasn’t a whole lot of post-retirement to talk about, a handful of so-called golden years. All you needed was a rocking chair and a front porch on which to rock it to get you from 65-69 (life expectancy in 1950).
But now that we’re living so much longer, we tell ourselves, instead of kicking back, actually retiring, we have the obligation to come up with a second career or other such ambition to make worthy use of the time. (That’s one perspective, anyway). One popular book on how to cope with aging calls the erstwhile declining years the “next third” of life, avoiding the dread word “last,” but also significantly fudging lifespan statistics.
Actually, from my reading of a chart on the history of lifespans (available online), this whole second life industry is based on faulty statistics.
Yes, we’re living longer, but not by as much as we like to think.
The big increase in lifespan over the last 100 years is in the outlook from birth, which 100 years ago was 52 (averaging men and women) and is now 79. But improvements in the early 20th century in hygiene and other childbirth and infancy practices took care of about 20 years of that and by the time early boomers were born life expectancy from birth was almost 70.
But more significant is the outlook from 60, when, having survived to that age, which almost all of us do, we begin to look toward those last years. From that point, the difference between a boomer’s outlook and those of his parents or grandparents is much smaller.
Between 1950 and 2010, roughly two generations, a 60 year old has five more years to plan for than his/her grandparents (18 vs. 23); a 70 year old, four more (11 vs. 15); an 80 year old just two more than his grandparent of the same age ( 7 vs. 9).
So: bad news, good news. We have less reason to think the lifespan trajectory will anytime soon lead to immortality. Yes, we have a few more years to enjoy (or fret over), but hardly a difference between rocking chair and a whole new life. To put it another way, we don’t have as much more obligation than the grandparents as we’re being told, or as much more time than they to develop dementia.
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