Will 2019 be the year we get closer to reaping a more robust longevity dividend? How do we make the most of our ageing society when inequality, inertia and ageism skew the experience of living healthy, longer lives? I put these questions and more to David Sinclair, director of the UK’s International Longevity Centre, a think tank exploring the impact of longevity on society.

Hear what when:

• Work of the International Longevity Centre, funding, process
• The global challenges and opportunities of healthy, longer lives
• New stage or stages of life emerging during classic midlife retirement years

“We’ve got no plan over what this stage is for. Governments are terrified about trying to tell people what it’s for, probably quite rightly, individuals haven’t planned for it… and our lives are going to be different to how our parents and grandparents did live.”

• How encourage positive attitudes towards ageing, change culture and redesign age-specific policies and expectations
• I question the need for innovation to specifically target older consumers. Do they really want/need different things? Don’t your passions dictate what you want to buy, no matter your age?
• While olders spend less than youngers, makers are missing a trick by not catering to discerning over-50s who don’t mind paying for a bespoke service / experience
• His biggest concerns around general lack of preparedness to deal with ageing populations
• Economic imperative for corporates to retain / hire older workers
• How address general complacency of all sectors of society to meet need to redesign jobs recognising and valuing greater social skills and empathy levels of olders?
• There’s a big advocacy gap in UK, suggests follow Norway’s example and appoint a minister of the future
• Startling statistic showing historic decline in UK deployment of older workers:
  

  “While we’ve seen growth in the proportion of people working longer, it’s still only 12 or 13 percent of people 65 working. A hundred years ago, seven in 10 men worked until 65. Now, it’s 12 in 100.”

• How happened?
• If he were minister of everything, how deliver significant societal change and fight ageism?
• Takeaways from ILC’s Future of Ageing conference last November?
• The importance of injecting some fun and lightness into the heaviness around discussion of ageing – nothing is age-inappropriate
• Reasons to be hopeful?
• Corporates ahead of governments when it comes to adapting offerings and services to match reality of demographic shifts
• On the ILC agenda this year?

Links

• International Longevity Centre website
• ILC call for more government engagement on ageing
• David on Twitter

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• Music: “Beautiful Day” by Sahin Koc