Meet the Solutionists transcript and episode notes - season 1, episode 4

Mark Scott 00:01

This podcast is recorded at the University of Sydney's Camperdown campus on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. They've been discovering and sharing knowledge here for tens of thousands of years. I pay my respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Dance Health Alliance practitioner Sally Dangar 00:26

Good morning dancers, most of you should know me already. But if you don't, my name is Sally. I am your Dance Health Alliance practitioner for today's dance moves class. And we'll get started.

Kerry, dancer 00:42

My name is Kerry and I'm 78. I come to dancing class because at 78, you need all the exercise you can get. I just love the music and to get moving to the music.

Helen, dancer 00:57

I'm Helen and I'm 72. I must be the baby here. I think the best thing about getting older is the wisdom you've gained from all your experience. And so you can look at the world in a much bigger picture than you would have if you were young.

Alex, dancer 01:09

I'm Alex, I'm 74. I hope young people can enjoy their lives and make the most of them. Don't waste any time. That's the trouble. We waste so much time.

Marian, dancer 01:20

I'm Marian and I'm 78. I think take every opportunity that comes your way. Even if it's a bit scary, have a go at everything and just try to get your life as full as possible. And enjoy whatever life you have.

Mark Scott 01:43

Between 1920 and 2020, the average human lifespan doubled. More of us are living to 100. And for babies born today, that could be the norm. What would that mean for our bodies, our minds, our jobs, our bank accounts, and our relationships? How do we make sure we're not just living longer but planning to live well. I'm Mark Scott and this is The Solutionists.

With me is Andrew Scott, a professor of economics at London Business School, a world-leading expert on longevity and the author of The 100-Year Life. Andrew, when you look at the economics, people tend to view an ageing society as a bad thing. But you talk about it as an incredible achievement. How do you look at longevity?

Professor Andrew John Scott 02:36

I think it what's really interesting in all of this is the negativity around ageing, in the bleak prospect that everyone makes of it. Even that's pretty extraordinary. You know, I mean, what's happening with an ageing society is there's fewer children to mourn. There's fewer parents snatched away in midlife, and more grandparents, great grandparents meeting their grandchildren. And all we can say is “Oh my God, that's a problem”. I mean, it's a remarkable way of looking at a great achievement. And I think we interpret the longer life as being about being older, and being old, and it being about end of life. And that, I think, is a big mistake. Because really what longevity is about, it’s about time. We have more time. No matter what your age, you have more time ahead of you than past generations. And I find that extraordinary. Because if you give me more time, I like that and I'm going to invest in my future, I can change how I age.

And to be a little bit personal, I was born in 1965 in England, and I was an identical twin, and my twin died within the first few days of life. I was looking through the data and to my surprise, I found that actually dying in the first year of life was the most common age of death in England at that time. Today, the most common age of death is 87. And the this seems to be, wow that's a fantastic opportunity. So for the first time in history, the young can expect to become the very old, we worry about getting old, we worry about outliving our health, outliving our finances, outliving our skills, our purpose, our relationships. And if you put those two things together, you then get the longevity imperative, which is what do you do now to make sure that you don't outlive those things?

Mark Scott 04:24

We've typically thought about a structure that says we spend a block of time in education, school, maybe university, then we get to work and we you know, we work through our careers, we hit retirement, and then we age and then we die. Do we need to rethink that model that approach to ageing, that mindset?

Professor Andrew John Scott 04:46

Completely and I think you know, that's once you start thinking longevity as about having more time. Then you think about doing things differently. So there's a concept called Best Practice Life Expectancy and it's the country at any point in time that has the highest average life expectancy at birth. Right now it's Japan. Japanese women live to about 87, on average. But what's extraordinary about that Best Practice Life Expectancy is over the last 150 years, in every decade, it's increased by two or three years. And it's still kind of increasing at that rate. So I say, going back to my analogy of time, that's like - at the end of every day - having another six to eight hours. And if your day went from 24 to 32 hours, you’d do it differently. You know, personally, I'd get up earlier, I’d go to bed later, I wouldn't have three meals a day, I'd have five smaller ones, their timing would shift, what I ate would change, I’d introduce new things. So we change the structure of the day. And actually, we're so wedded to this concept of a three-stage life – education, work, retirement – that we think that's natural. But in the 20th century, we created two stages of life. We created teenagers, and we created pensioners. Neither of them existed before. My father was born in 1925. He was never a teenager; you went from being a child to being an adult. So we've already locked in, but we need to change. And I think that's a key thing. Because if you are going to be living to 100, and working until you’re 80, you've got to do your career differently. We can't just carry on in the same way as possible.

Mark Scott 06:19

So Andrew, you're talking about living longer. That could be like, a way of thinking of that is living a 32-hour a day? What does that mean over a lifetime?

Professor Andrew John Scott 06:29

So I did some calculations. So, ignore the first 20 years of life, ignore the last 10 years of life, I’ll give you the weekend and the evenings off, call everything else that's left productive hours, time you could spend doing something – it could be working, could be watching Netflix, whatever you want – productive hours. If life expectancy goes from 70 to 100, then you've got another 100,000 productive hours. So that's kind of the exam question that longevity sets us in society. What do you, Mark, want to do with another 100,000 hours? And it's a striking question (when) you ask people that, because they go, “Oh, wow”. That is the gift, but the daunting gift of what longevity brings, and it radically changes everything. If you think about living a 100-year-life and working from 20 to 80. Working for 60 years solves your financial problem. But there's a deeper challenge if you want to have a good life, which is what's my health, what's my relationships, what's my sense of engagement. So I can't see careers just naturally extending out 60 years. We need to develop what I call a multi-stage life, a multi-stage career, where it may be that one part of your life you're focused on money, working full time, conventional career. But at other times, you're going to say, “I want to change” or “I’m bored with what I'm doing” or “I've got to change because I’ve lost my job”, or “I need a different work/life balance”. And I think that's a really interesting shift. Because in the 20th century, we invented retirement. And as life expectancy got longer, we take more and more time after retirement as leisure. I think what we're going to see as we work longer careers, is we'll take more leisure time, this side of retirement, which is more flexible working, career breaks, part time work. But that changes the nature of work and careers quite substantially.

Dance Health Alliance practitioner Sally Dangar 08:24

All right dancers let's get that heart rate up a little bit. Get those arms moving, I want to see those feet stomping on the floor. Let's let everyone know we're here today. Moving those feet. You've got it, dancers. That's the way! Let's lift those knees a little higher now – you've got it.

Marian, dancer 08:40

If I lived to 100, I would celebrate by having all my loved ones around me. And lots of dancing. I hope.

Dance Health Alliance practitioner Sally Dangar

Absolutely!

Alex, dancer 08:50

Oh, I’d celebrate with champagne and cake. And everyone I love around me.

Marian, dancer 08:56

The best thing about getting older is being able to do things I like to do rather than have to do to earn a living. I'm a guide at the Taronga Zoo. And I do various volunteer things, but I'm also out and about lunching, and dinner and [having] coffee with my friends, which is wonderful.

Kerry, dancer 09:17

If I had to work until I was 80, hmm I probably could have, I only left my job 10 years ago. But as long as you can do it and you're happy doing it and [there’s] nice people there, I think work as long as you like.

Helen, dancer 09:32

If I had to work until 80, I would be absolutely horrified. It’s quite ludicrous to say that people have to work to 80. Some people who've got cushy jobs behind a desk that don't require extra brainpower. Perhaps they can, but most people's work can’t.

Mark Scott 09:50

So I'm sitting here thinking about my children. They may have many more decades of work to go. What might retirement look like for them?

Professor Andrew John Scott 09:58

Retirement is already changing. The notion that there is a single age where for everyone work comes to a hard stop, that's already disappearing. People are retiring later; they’re retiring at different ages. And frequently they're taking more flexible work, part time work. So already, there's a very big shift occurring in retirement. For me, one of the big challenges we’ve got is governments thinking how to deal with longer lives, they're just changing the parameters of that three-stage life, they're just saying, “Hey, you're going to, we're going to stretch out that working career.”

And that's a really big problem. Because if I look around the world now, as an economist, one of my biggest concerns is that we're obsessed with raising the state pension age, which is very controversial politically, but for good reason I think as well. But the real problem is from about 50 years onwards, people leave the labor market. And they leave the labor market for a bunch of reasons. Some is that they're ill, some is to care for people. Some is that their skills are out of date, they lose their job, and sometimes it's just ageism. So what we're going to do is try to support people working from 50 onwards, let alone how we raise the retirement age.

Mark Scott 11:06

There used to be a line in Australia, you retired at 65 and died at 70. Now, people are living longer, are you concerned about the resilience of the pension schemes that exist?

Professor Andrew John Scott 11:17

Well, I mean, superannuation has been a very interesting innovation where Australia has led the world. And of course now everyone's now looking to say, well, they're maturing, what's going to happen as a consequence? So, the supers have been good. But you can't assume it's going to work if you stop at 65, and living to 100. So, you either put more in when you're working, which I don't think is a political feasible outcome, or you work for longer. And it's a brutal message to give, but as an economist, I cannot get away from the solution that if we are living longer, we have to work for longer. So then the question is: how do I do that? How does the firm support me doing it? And what policies do governments need? And that's well beyond just pension policy. So I think that's going to be an enormous challenge. Then there's a question of how do you keep people in work for longer? And how do you make sure it doesn't take jobs away from younger people. So it's a very profound change. But it's one that we can deal with, one we can handle.

But it's not just about the money. The thing I think is really dangerous here is to think that this is all about accumulating a pension. If you think about the assets you have to worry about, absolutely, finances is one of them. But skills and human capital, so you can do things that you want to do is going to be key.

I call those your productive assets, your vitality assets, your mental and physical health, and relationships [are] absolutely key. You've got to keep investing in those because they have a lot longer to last for, and then your transformational assets, your ability to navigate through change. And you know, the key thing of a longer life is that as a 58-year-old, I have more time ahead of me than any previous generation of 58-year-olds, I have to invest more in my future. And that's not just about money, it's the things that matter as well. Purpose, relationships, and health.

Mark Scott 13:10

Is there a risk that this will be a golden era for the rich, who have the money and the wherewithal to support themselves, but if you're poor or disadvantaged, you might be living longer, but your access to the resources and the support that you need might be fairly perilous and so you're at greater risk from longevity? What do we do to close that policy gap so everyone can benefit from the benefits that you're articulating that come with a with a long and healthy life?

Professor Andrew John Scott 13:39

Yeah, it's a really big challenge, because there's sort of two things that could happen with a longer life. One is that, you know, initial conditions compound longer. If you're born on the wrong side of town, [and] you're living for longer, that inequality becomes even more prominent. The other is, over a longer life, initial conditions become less important because you've got more time to recover. But it looks like we're going down the former at the moment, if you look at the inequality in life expectancy, you also see that in general, those on lower income don't just have a shorter life, but have more of that life in poorer health. In Australia, there's considerable inequality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous population in life expectancy. I live in London, there's North Kensington and South Kensington. They're right next to one another, [but] the difference in life expectancy is 12 years. So it's a staggering difference. There's an awful lot you can do to change how you age. But of course, if you have lower income, your environment’s going to be different and you've got fewer resources to age well. So you can imagine in so many levels, wealth, health, job opportunities, those inequalities diverge.

We're already seeing it for in the labour market for instance – the labour market’s working pretty well for a lot of older people, particularly those with more education, but not for those with lower education. They're having to work for longer in a job that's not good. They don't get well paid, it’s bad for their health. So really, really, it's a big challenge. But I think the key to this is to start recognising that age itself is not a very informative variable. We age very diversely. Not everyone over 65 has the same problem and the same needs. So, I think we've really got to focus and say: actually, everyone’s over 65, but this group, they're okay, they don't need much government support, (but) this group really do. And that may lead to some pretty radical changes around who gets a pension. Why do we have a pension? Is a pension just a reward for getting old? Or is actually focused on people who are in most need of it. But it's about stepping away from this simple-minded concept – ‘Everyone's the same. Everyone has the same need’. It's really not.

Mark Scott 15:50

You're saying we have to be long-term thinking now. How do you overcome the behavioral challenge of just short-term thinking and immediate gratification, rather than the longer-term investment?

Professor Andrew John Scott 16:01

Well if you’ve got the answer, Mark, please do tell me, I'd love to know that. But yeah, every time I sit down for a meal I have that same problem. I it's really hard, isn't it? And we are not hardwired to act in the long run. I do think we are going to see the emergence of what I call an ‘evergreen economy’. So you need to be evergreen, you need to be healthy and relevant at all ages. There's a concept of the silver economy, which is there's just lots of old people. I sort of get that, but the silver economy quickly slides into conversations about how in Japan they now sell more adult diapers than baby diapers. It's always couched in terms of care dementia decline, whereas older people want fun stuff as well. But this evergreen economy of investing in ageing well is going to get really big. Because if you think about our health system, our health system isn't really a health system. We've got a health system that's based around disease: I get ill, I go to hospital, hospital tries to cure me. That works when diseases are infectious and people are under 50, but it doesn't work with age -elated diseases. You kind of can't cure them, they're chronic. And once you get one, you tend to get another. So, what we're going to do is, we’re going to keep people healthy. Now, that is a public health agenda. It will involve some changes in hospitals about prevention, rather than intervention. But it means the health system actually escapes well beyond hospitals and doctors, to the food and drink that I buy. It's going to be about what I do in the gym and in my leisure. And I see signs of this already beginning to emerge with this sort of evergreen economy.

You know my work, actually with David Sinclair, the Australian scientist, on trying to put a value on ageing well, suggests that if we could get one more year of life expectancy, through slowing down how we age and so being healthier for longer, it's worth $50 trillion in present value terms (in the United States, $3 trillion US dollars. For Australia, it works out at about 4% of GDP every year). So that's how valuable health is. And we're beginning to wake up to it. People are recognising I don't want to be ill when I'm older. How do I age better? So it’s a really big challenge for society. It requires a long-term perspective, but taking immediate action now. These are not things we're good at. But drip by drip by drip, the stone gets worn away and change starts to happen. So this is an evolution, but I'm beginning to see an explosion in the products and offerings that are around. And it's not about adult diapers. It's: how do I keep you fit healthy and happy for longer?

Dance Health Alliance practitioner Sally Dangar 18:47

You got it. Let's go. Beautiful job dancers. You look amazing. I believe in you. You've got this, keep going.

Marian, dancer 18:54

My longest friends are flatmates that I shared houses with. And so some of those friendships are over 50 years old. And we know everything about each other. So, they're very open friendships. So it's nice. They're my longest friends.

Alex, dancer 19:10

Oh! My best friends are from school, from kindergarten and school. Yeah, we've been friends all those years. We're still friends. We still get together all the time.

Kerry, dancer 19:19

My husband and I are going to Africa on a safari next year. You know, we're looking forward to that. But I never thought I'd be doing that at 78. We thought we've got to get in before we're 80.

Dance Health Alliance practitioner Sally Dangar 19:31

Beautiful dancers, keeping those shoulders pulled back and down, engaging that core. Feel that belly button pulling in. If we can make sure those feet are flat on the floor. That's excellent, beautiful dancers.

Kerry, dancer 19:43

What gives me a sense of purpose? I must say I love being with my grandkids and doing things with them. I can go kayaking with them on their boat and bike riding and just do stuff with the grandkids which my parents never did with my children. And they always say they love me.

Marian, dancer 20:03

I really like being given a lot of respect from younger people who treat me really beautifully. And I feel special sometimes by being as old as I am.

Mark Scott 20:16

There's a lot of focus on ‘Blue Zones’, the places in the world with the healthiest, longest-living populations. One of the things that seems evident is there are strong social connections underpinning these societies. At the same time, I think a lot of people fear they'll be lonely as they age, how do we set about developing robust relationships that will endure as we age?

Professor Andrew John Scott 20:39

Great question. Of course, part of this is the need to really focus much more on intergenerational connectivity. You know, when I was a kid growing up in London, it was a typical London family, I had loads of cousins. I’d go to parties with endless numbers of cousins, loads of aunts and uncles, and I had two surviving grandparents. But you know, if you take the case of China, where there's kind of one child per family, you've now got one child, two parents, no aunts and uncles, and four grandparents. That's quite an extreme outcome. But that intergenerational connectivity really needs to be encouraged, which puts a lot of burden on me as an individual to make sure I don't just associate with people my own age, don't just carry on doing the same thing as ever, but try to experiment and innovate.

Mark Scott 21:32

But it's kind of unusual for someone in their 40s, to have someone they describe a great friend who's in their 80s, for example. Do we need to rethink and be more innovative in how we are open to opportunities of friendship across the generations?

Professor Andrew John Scott 21:46

I think we do. And, you know, there's all sorts of evidence that the returns are quite high for intergenerational friendships of both ends of the age spectrum. Our concept of adult development has sort of been framed by short lives. So we kind of think I reached 18, you're an adult, and you don't change. But the real joy of a longer life is it means adult development can happen for longer, you can grow and change, do new things, make new friends, meet more people. And that then gives that ability across the generations to have a rich relationship. If you think about it: if I'm 60 and life expectancy is 70, I don't have much incentive to invest in developing new relationships. The numbers just don't work. But if I'm 60 and living to 100, actually there's a radically different incentive. And there's also an incentive to mix with someone who's a bit younger and different. Because diversity is fun, it kind of is innovative, it keeps you awake and changing. So, lots of things are changing.

Mark Scott 22:51

Just some advice, Andrew, for those listening, and our students who might be listening. They are full of life, full of ambition, they're in their late teens and early 20s. What's the most important thing they should be doing now to prepare for a long life and a good life in the future?

Professor Andrew John Scott 23:08

Yeah, it's a really great question, I think what’s interesting about longevity is, you’ve got more future self. So you do need to think about giving that future self better things. So you do have to be a little bit careful of how much you do the bad stuff. But you've also got to borrow from that future self. And one of the great opportunities of a long life is you can spend your 20s just finding out more who you are, what you value, and what you like. It's about exploring and creating options. And I think that's a fantastic thing to do. You don't need to be in a rush. And you can set yourself up options for later to know more yourself. And I think that's just wonderful.

Mark Scott 23:56

I'm Mark Scott, Vice Chancellor of the University of Sydney. A huge thanks to Professor Andrew Scott, for his insights today. Andrew is a Professor of Economics at London Business School and expert on longevity and the author of The 100-Year Life. To the Dance Health Alliance crew, thanks for sharing your moves, and your wisdom.

Dance Health Alliance practitioner Sally Dangar 24:18

Okay, dancers. Let's take our curtsy or our bow. Amazing class. I'm so proud of you.

(applause)

Mark Scott 24:25

Make sure you're following The Solutionists in your favorite podcast app, so you never miss a chance to meet the brightest minds working to solve the most complex issues, the people who are making change happen. The Solutionists is a podcast from the University of Sydney, produced by Deadset Studios.

Next time we're going back to the very beginning.

(Baby makes noises)

We’re going back to look at the first 1000 days of our life on earth. Because as our best researchers are demonstrating, so much of our destiny is set in those first days. So how do we make the most of this critical window of opportunity?

Professor Adrienne Gordon 25:03

Perhaps some of the most important aspects of life are before you even arrive, anything that happens in that period is potentially going to play out in later life.

Dance Health Alliance practitioner Sally Dangar 25:19

My name is Sally. I'm 28. And I'm a senior movement practitioner with the Dance Health Alliance. It's hugely impactful, we're really proud of not only the physical effect that our programs have, but the mental health effect that they have as well. We truly do believe in our ethos of ‘movement is medicine’. I was quite anxious about being a younger person and facilitating classes to older people. But I've realized by just being myself, it's benefited both of us both ways. I learn so much from the people I work with, they make me feel really inspired and they've given me such a sense of such a sense of life. It really shows that, you know, age doesn't live have to limit you. And I think there's such a stereotype that being old is a negative thing, and I think these women have taught me that that's just not the case at all.

Episode notes

Audio transcript

Production credits and acknowledgement

The Solutionists, with Mark Scott

Episode 4: The longevity revolution – how to invest in your future and plan a meaningful 100-year life

Episode notes

Audio transcript

Production credits and acknowledgement

Listen to The Solutionists, with Mark Scott