I have noticed an increase in drip-feeding the population with little "awareness" articles issues from Central Government, relating to the problems of increased lifespan. This short one, quoted below, is from the Guardian, and published today:
Lifespan leap raises care problems
Today's 20-year-olds are twice as likely as their parents to reach the age of 100, a new analysis of Britain's rapidly ageing population reveals today.
My note: This assumes current projections hold, however, the exponential growth in computing power, affecting the fields of chemistry and biochemistry, and ageing research, means that this estimate is likely to be very conservative. There are some people who think someone is alive now, who might well have an indefinite lifespan. The longer people live for, the more medicine has time to advance,and the more likely it is that interventions will be found for specific problems of ageing. So, the guesses below are incredibly conservative, my estimate is that these numbers will be far higher, and not only that, the survival rate past 100 will be greater.
A girl born this year has a one-in-three chance of becoming a centenarian, and a boy a one-in-four chance, the research by the Department for Work and Pensions discloses.
A girl born in 1931 had only a 5 per cent chance of reaching her century, with the figure dropping to jut 2.5 per cent for boys.
On current trends there will be half a million people aged 100 or over by the year 2066.
And here lies the rub. We cannot make policy based on current trends, not when information technology and Artificial Intelligence, used increasingly in basic computational molecular research, is advancing in sophistication with exponential rapidity.
Steve Webb, the Pensions minister, warned that the huge advances in average lifespans meant people would need to save more for a retirement that could stretch into an 11th decade.
Here, finally, we have someone who is aware of the problems, but seems to scared to voice them explicitly. The government knows that it will not be able to keep the current pension model in operation - the entire notion of retirement will have to be re-evaluated. the current problems we are seeing, with the government attempting to reduce pension liabilities, and talking about building a retirement age escalator, meaning retirement age will rise automatically as average lifespan increases, without the need for policy decisions, just as the fuel escalator functions with fuel duty.
He said: "The dramatic speed at which life expectancy is changing means that we need to radically rethink our perceptions about our later lives. We simply can't look to our grandparents' experience of retirement as a model for our own.
It is very rare to find overt discussion of this problem. About 5 years ago, the newspapers were focusing on pension provision, and the lack of it. However, should there suddenly be a paradigm shift in ageing research, many pension programs will simply go into default - a programme that is set up to pay pensions for 10 years on average, will not cope if its members suddenly require 30 or 50 years of additional pension payments.
The question is, what models will be proposed? Not everyone can manage to save enough to invest in a second property, and rent it out and live off the proceeds - which is probably the most secure option currently available.
No comments:
Post a Comment