Whenever I want to refresh my thinking on the subject of life expectancy and longevity, I hop online to visit notable psychologist Laura Carstensen, at the Stanford Center on Longevity. She’s the founding director, and spends her days studying older people, and coming up with ways to improve their lives.
A recent article, though, had me scratching my head. and thinking, “You’ve gone too far this time, Laura”. But then I read a little further, past the part that blew my mind, and realized that there might be something in it, after all.
Her proposal?
That the next generation reverse the long-held ideal of 20 to 35 years of work, with retirement at the end.
Young people, she says, should spread their education over many years, doing some exploring and traveling, and delay having children until their late 20s and 30s. She suggests that education and apprenticeships could stretch longer, to accommodate the years of having young children at home.
That means that they would start their serious full-time life work at 40 or so, and stay in the job until well into their 60s and 70s, gradually phasing into part-time work, and finally retiring by age 80.
Why do we pack all our responsibilities into a few short years?
In a few sentences, true to her usual style, Carstensen turns the priorities of generations upside down.
Ideas like this don’t originate in a vacuum—a wave of scientific and philosophical thought has blossomed in response to the recent statistics on longevity. By now, you are used to seeing life expectancy charts like the one in this article.
It’s a mind-blower, but more so when put in context with this observation from the National Academy of Sciences:
“The bulk of this mortality reduction has occurred since 1900 and has been experienced by only about 4 of the roughly 8,000 human generations that have ever lived.”
Carstensen speculates about why life expectancy rates are such a game changer, saying:
“A woman who is 40 years old today can expect to live another 45 years, on average, while 5% will live to see their 100th birthday. The average 40-year-old man will live another 42. For many people, most of those years will be healthy enough to continue work that doesn’t involve intense physical labor. So why are we still packing all of our career and family obligations into a few frantic decades?”
It doesn’t occur to people to ask such a question. Most of us, spurred on by financial necessity, are stuck in the common pattern of human behavior—the milestones appear before us like a well-worn track:
- We go to school as long as we can, although some young people take a year or two out to explore the world,
- We cast about for some direction and training to prepare us for work we think we can do.
- After several starts, if and when we have found it, we buckle in for the long haul.
- When we feel a little more secure, we find a partner, and maybe start a family.
- We look for a suitable home for our family, and commit ourselves to a mortgage and decades of trying to reduce that debt.
A new way of thinking about the milestones of life
Carstensen questions the current norm of a 4 decade professional sprint that ends abruptly at 65. Instead, she advocates planning for marathon careers that last longer but include time for learning, for family needs and activities outside of the workplace. She says:
“We need a new model. The current one “doesn’t work, because it fails to recognize all the other demands on our time. People are working full-time at the same time they’re raising children. You never get a break. You never get to step out. You never get to refresh. . . .We go at this unsustainable pace, and then pull the plug.”
I marvel at her thinking—and how she has covered most of the bases. There’s only one thing missing—how do young people get by financially during those early years?
I think the guaranteed basic income is the perfect solution for those decades in which young people are exploring their options. And if you are concerned about how a society could possibly fund, and justify supporting millions of young people while they experiment with life, don’t be. Just think of the money currently paid in pensions to the millions of seniors who may be happier finding purposeful work to do.
In closing, I acknowledge that Carstensens’ idea is radical, and may prompt a torrent of criticism, even outrage. But I also know that all change happens with an idea—and I believe today’s radical idea could be tomorrow’s solution.
Very interesting ideas, as I have had shifting thoughts about my work and career recently. I never liked the “work at a job that makes you miserable so you can retire” model. I taught in a state that put into social security and an unstable pension fund for 10 years. Then, when I was 35, I moved to a state that has a separate teacher retirement fund, in lieu of social security. I taught here for 5 years. Now I am almost 40 and have resigned from my job and plan on working part time. Expecting families with children to put in ridiculous hours at work is simply not realistic.
Recently, I have also realized that, given my health and family history, there is a high probability that I will live to be 100. I am very healthy and both of my grandmas are in their 90’s and living independently. But I also know people my age who have a growing pillbox and are already declining physically. I’m guessing there is a wide range with the average life expectancy.
Great news about your family’s longevity! Having relatives who lived a long life is not a guarantee, but it is a very good indication that you will too. Like you, I moved around a lot when I was working. I had a four-year ‘window’ of tolerance for work, which meant that I’d grow restless after three or so years, and apply for a transfer. Surprisingly, that strategy worked for me!
It is an intriguing idea that makes a lot of sense for many of us. But not for people doing heavy manual labor, and not for math and science geniuses who tend to do their best work in their 20s and 30s. I don’t know, however, if many seniors would be willing to give up some or all of their pension to fund the idea. Maybe we should have a guaranteed income for everyone up until age 30, and then after age 70, or something like that. Anyway, it’s a new economic world, so we should be willing to discuss a lot of new ideas, and adopt the ones that make the most sense for the 21st century.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Tom! Good point about ‘youthful geniuses’—I’m a late bloomer, so I wouldn’t know about that! I believe the talk around universal income is in the early stages. Applying it before age 30, and after 70 makes a lot of sense. I’ll be writing more about this soon, and with your permission, would like to use your ideas.
A thoughtful idea. The current concept of retirement has some kind of “stop” button in it anyway, and I think that engagement is one of the keys to aging well. Plus, it does seem like an un-needed stress to force yourself into a career model that may not really be right for you (because you didn’t have the time to explore) and then work your yaya off so you can burn out and then retire! Good stuff. Thanks for this post.
Credit Laura Carstensen for thinking outside of the box! I went along with the idea that the earlier you retire, the better. I’d rethink that today (almost 20 years later)! Fortunately, though, I had lots of energy left after I ended formal work, and went on to do other things—this blog being one!
Today many young people, the middle aged and seniors find themselves in a precarious situation. Everybody except the rich want a ‘guaranteed basic income’. Where is the money going to come from? Most governments around the world are at suffocating debt levels that are preventing them from even funding the basic items such as healthcare, education, infrastructure and social services. Also, many traditional jobs are disappearing. We need our society to become more self-sufficient and self-reliant by having individuals choose the right lifestyles for themselves throughout their lifetime. Lifelong learning and ‘second skilling’ will be the keys. Instead of waiting for more handouts, find out which areas you excel at and continue to do them well into your retirement years. At the same time those that fall through the cracks should be given every opportunity to succeed.
Many traditional jobs are disappearing—and this will happen more and more as AI takes over. I think there will be a world-wide change of attitude about a basic income. It will no longer be thought of as a ‘handout’. Today’s youth is in a terrible position, and no amount of self-sufficiency and life-long learning can heal the tremendous rift between the loss of traditional jobs and the escalating cost of living (which includes the astronomical housing costs). I’m not saying I have the answers, Joe, but I do believe we need to re-think current attitudes about the poor. I’m not suggesting you are blaming the poor—you certainly haven’t done that. But poverty is as old and well-established as human history, and it will never end until we begin to think and talk about it differently.
AI will probably only takeover the repetitive jobs. The creative jobs will be safe. Then there will be all the new jobs added from the creation of new industries that will replace the old industries. We are all in transition and the young people because they have more high tech computer & digital industries skills & knowledge will be more prepared than older workers, who depend on re-skilling work opportunities. Where will the money come from to finance the guaranteed basic income?
I’m not an economist, but even I can see that there are enormous discrepancies in the tax system, (benefiting the 1%) which could be adjusted to fund at least some of the expense of providing a GBI. And as crazy as it may seem, robots, whose owners will capitalize on their use in the new economy, should be taxed accordingly. People who receive GBI will also contribute by spending money to finance their own needs. GBI is a new idea, and the discussion around it is just beginning. Greater minds than mine are considering a vast array of possibilities.
The Top 1% are shrewd! They probably have more tax shelters then they will ever need. If not they will seek tax shelters outside the Country. That leaves the Bottom 99% to pay for everything including the GBI. I still believe that that goal for each one of us should be self-sufficiency and self-reliance through lifelong learning and if the will is there pursuing self-employment. For example the Country of Bangladesh use to be the poorest Country in the World. Then along came Muhammad Yunus Author of the book ‘Creating a World Without Poverty’. in the poorest Country in the World you would assume that a possible answer would be give them a GBI. But no it’s just the opposite. Yunus set up the Grameen Bank which provided small business loans to the poor. In this scenario each family was encouraged to find a skill(s) that they could work with to make some money. This led poor families to be more self-sufficient and self-reliant. I would imagine that the poorer families had an opportunity to bond more and be responsible for their own financial resources not just sit around doing nothing. All of us in Canada and the USA could find a skill(s) to work with then get some mentoring help and access to loans, if required.
I have heard of similar programs, most notably for women in extremely poor countries. When applied correctly, with appropriate follow-up, they do work, and that is very encouraging. Thank you, Joe, for your input.
I like the way Andy and I did it. We majored in physics, a hard subject but a good preparation for a career. He got his Ph.D., but after one semester in graduate school I decided I wanted to travel more (I went to Stanford-in-Germany in my junior year and traveled a lot) so quit to work and save money. He had always been a saver too so when he got his Ph.D. we both had $4,000 saved up. He had a job in France for 13 months, so we married and spent half our money traveling around Europe, then spent the rest traveling back to the U.S. the long way — the Middle East, East Africa, India, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. Then we were happy to settle down again. We’ve always lived in apartments and below our means, so we’ve never been saddled with debt. One reason I married him was because he enjoyed working and I knew he would wear well. Not very romantic, but a great basis for the joys of a long marriage.
I’m a pessimist about your plan — I’m afraid I agree with George Will, we will eventually have a gigantic economic collapse and it’s not going to be pretty: Another epic economic collapse is coming.
I’ve read Will’s article, and while it is depressing, and leaves me with a pervading feeling of doom, I recall the last collapse, and how the world didn’t end. But I’m quite convinced that the last economic crisis fueled the rise of politicians like Trump—who capitalized on the discontent of those who didn’t recover. Not much was done to remedy the economic damage done by the last collapse, so we are left to wonder—what will it take? Those in power, who are in a position to create change, don’t seem to be interested in doing that. Which leaves those at the bottom of the economic scale holding the bag. So we will be doing massive welfare programs, or we could be doing GBT—take your pick.
Yes, apparently the excesses that led to the last crisis are coming back and the people who want to regulate them don’t have enough power. I’m also reading that the methods the government used to get out of the crisis would no longer work, so things will be a lot worse. We will have to see. I can’t see GBI happening if the economy completely collapses. The desperation of the Venezuelans comes to mind.
I’m sure they have the power, CM. What they don’t have is political will, an ingredient which precedes any change.
Interesting. Especially because this is very much the trajectory my own life took–albeit not by design. Left school at 16, did unskilled jobs, married, had kids and was a full-time mom, found my vocation later, after the kids were in school, went back to study in my forties, worked at a profession I loved, dropped from full-time to part time in my late sixties, retired altogether in my seventies but went on to write seven books and at 82 am still co-editing a magazine. I have never regretted the way it turned out.
Marian, you have my admiration and respect! My life followed a similar pattern. My big regret is that I had very little time for myself, and consequently spent years being exhausted. The difference between our lives, and the lives of young people today, lies in the opportunities we had. Yes, we did unskilled jobs—they were there for the picking. Also, education was much cheaper, and housing a fraction of what it costs today. Today’s youth have very little to choose from. Education costs are astronomical, and even renting a place is out of sight. They are between a rock and a hard place, economically.
So very true! I would never have advised my grandchildren to quit school early like I did. And I am glad they didn’t. It’s a different world now.
We could hardly wait to leave school and enter ‘real life’. We had so many choices waiting for us!
Her ideas are radical is an understatement. While quite a few observations are or may be very valid for Western societies, the reality in the Eastern societies at least till just a couple of decades ago was and is in many cases vastly different. While bureaucrats, armed forces and other pensioned private sector work force retire at around 60 years of age, the unorganised sector of the work force work till they are physically or mentally incapable.
Let us take my own example. I started to work when I was 16. I wanted to retire at 50 but I was unable to due to financial considerations as well as opportunities that came knocking till I was 57. After that, the last thing that I wanted to do was to work in the traditional sense and I was able to retire because my son had settled down well in his own career and life. There are friends and colleagues who are still working at around my present age of 75 due to more or less the same conditions and in some cases, simply due to no alternatives like their children not willing to take over either practices or businesses.
Things are now different for young people indeed but, they burn out at much younger ages than my generation did. I suppose that this is true in the Western societies as well.
In the Western world, Rummuser, in the not-too-distant-past, it was usual for many workers to have a pension upon retiring. That has changed, and now the ‘unorganized’ work force is in the majority. This has many people worried about how they will live when they can no longer work. This change, for the most part, has occurred over the past 10 to 15 years, and will only intensify as AI begins to dominate the work force. No wonder, as you suggest, young people burn out at a younger age!
I’ve long embraced some of these ideas and practiced them — not wedding until I was in my late twenties, my husband older. We enjoyed five childless years together before starting our family. We tried to hit a happy medium with travel in the U.S. during those years which turned out to be a good thing, since my husband’s health declined resulting in his retiring a year early. Travel plans we had expected in our older years were no longer an option. I planned to work until I was 80, but retired a year earlier.
That said, working past current retirement age really does depend a lot on the type job a person has — the physical demands, the person’s cognitive functions — numerous factors to consider. Hard for me to say yet whether or not a guaranteed annual subsidy from the government is a program I would support. As a nation in the U.S., we haven’t even been able to provide all our citizens health care, so expect if we talk about this now, maybe if it’s viable, it could become a reality for my grandchildren, or their children..
I now have to add my personal info each time I comment here which I didn’t used to have to do.
I’ll quickly deal with the tech problem before I go on to discussing your comment, Joared. I’m finding that I have to fill in my information for numerous blogs. I wonder if WordPress has made some changes that affect us, without telling us what is going on. Possibly this has something to do with the new editor (Gutenberg) that they are beginning to promote to us. I will try to get in touch with them about this.
It sounds like you and your husband were on the same track throughout your marriage, making decisions jointly, and having a great life. So glad you got to travel before your husband’s health declined!Not everyone is enamored with the GBI, but the advent of artificial intelligence may make it necessary to adopt something along that design, just to keep young people afloat. Hard to know what the future holds!
I like the idea – to a point. I definitely don’t think people are going to be ready (nor should they) retire at 65 when they’re still healthy and capable and helping society in all sorts of ways. With the average age of life expectancy up to 85 – and higher for many of us – we should be able to participate in part-time work that adds to our enjoyment of life – and gives back to society. “Kids” (in their teens and 20s) seem to be more immature anyway than what they were like in the ’40s and ’50s and earlier. I’d suggest after (and during college) they participate in part-time work to acquire a work ethic while also exploring the world and deciding what they want to do in their career years from the 40’s to 70’s. Love this kind of thoughtful exploration in cultural change.
All good ideas, Pamela! People like you and I are still thinking ahead, not resting on our ‘laurels’ at all! In my own view, there is so much in the world to do, and I want to be part of it. I think the fact that young people seem more immature, however, is due to the lack of opportunity. When I was young (even in my teens) I had my pick of jobs—admittedly low paying, but they did give me the experience of being independent, and definitely led to other things.
In the book “Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family,” Anne-Marie Slaughter suggests the same thing. In fact, it makes a lot of sense. Why SHOULD we do pedal to the metal in earliest years and have so many unfettered later in life that many of us deteriorate for want of a sense of purpose? Other great ideas, too. Here’s my review FWIW: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1419314650
Thanks for the thorough review—it’s definitely a book we women should all read! My early years were a blur of activity, and I have the usual reaction when I look back, “How on earth did I do it”? But, fortunately (or unfortunately), my later years seem almost as busy. I need to stop and smell the roses occasionally. How about you? Hope you are allowing yourself some time just to ruminate!
Hi, Diane – I agree that this is ‘mind-blowing’ idea that offers a very thought-provoking alternative. I don’t entirely have my mind wrapped around this yet, but I am very interested in reading more. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Hi Donna, I appreciate your interest! I often hop over to visit your blog—I don’t think you have to worry about not finding purpose in life!
Very interesting ideas here. Don’t know if they are applicable to everyone, but I’m sure that they are to many people.
Although they have followed the “traditional” routes of life, some of my friends continue to work into their 70s. I know this isn’t unusual. Lots of people work past normal retirement age, for one reason or another: they love what they’re doing; they need the money; whatever.
Thanks for this essay, Diane. Take care —
Neil
Nice to hear from you, Neil. Working beyond seventy doesn’t seem such a stretch these days, given our new statistics of longevity—which, of course, is due to people’s improved health. And people find purpose in different things, work being an important component for some. Although I receive no money for what I do, I have found a great deal of satisfaction in working on my blog. Holds true for you as well, I think!
This is so interesting to me, Diane. I retired at 65 because I was tired and, as a result of my weariness, my enthusiasm for my job had waned. After reading your post, I now wonder if I was tired because of the frantic pace with which I had been working since I was 21; and had I taken more time to complete my education, travel, have lengthier student teaching experiences, etc. would I have been willing to work longer at a job I loved? I think so. Thank you for another eye-opener.
I also have regrets about my retirement date, AB! I finished my teaching career (which I loved) at 59, feeling ill and exhausted. If only I’d persevered a little longer! I was suffering from a prolonged ‘flu, I think. It really seems a shame that some of the best years of our lives are so dominated by feelings of weariness and exhaustion!
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