The International Longevity Center in the UK turns out interesting white papers every so often. Note that the organization is funded by a number of pensions and insurance companies, sizable business concerns whose long term success depends on (a) correctly predicting the future of human aging, and, (b) preventing the short term incentives of politicians and executives from steering them over a cliff. The first point requires research, and the second point requires presenting that research publicly and loudly. This is a time of great uncertainty for the pensions and life insurance industry, an era in which accelerated technological innovation in the medical life sciences makes prediction difficult in comparison to the state of affairs a few decades past. It is clear that life spans will leap upwards at some point, but when?

The latest white paper from the International Longevity Center runs the numbers to show that increasing life expectancy correlates with increased productivity in developed countries. The authors suggest that this results from a greater return on investment in education, in that educated people have more time in which to be productive following their education, and this tends to encourage greater investment in education as a path to productivity. This is an effect that can be suppressed by laws that force retirement at a set age, an iniquity that is thankfully fading away but nonetheless still exists in some professions and parts of the world.

One important underlying point in all this is that increased longevity is not a matter of adding years of disability to the end of life; it can only be achieved robustly by extending the span of productive healthy life. Aging is caused by accumulated molecular damage, and to the degree that this damage accumulation can be slowed, both healthy and overall life span is increased. That slowing of damage has progressed steadily and incrementally over the past few generations, an incidental side-effect of improved medicine and increased wealth. The goal of present rejuvenation research and development programs is to step beyond mere slowing to be able to repair the damage, and thus reverse aging. That will lead to the expected great leap upwards in life expectancy for people already in later life. The first of these technologies are already in commercial development, but until they are tested no-one can say for sure how effective they will be. Nor is it possible to make firm predictions on the timing of the following therapies, still early in development.

Towards a longevity dividend: Life expectancy and productivity across developed countries