The public discussion in a number of countries around the world expresses worries about what is called an aging society. These countries anticipate a future with fewer younger people who are active members of the economy, and a growing number of older people who need to be supported by the people still in the workforce. It’s an inversion of the usual demographic pyramid, with less at the bottom, and more at the top.

However, our guest in this episode recommends a different framing of the future – not as an aging society, but as a longevity society, or even an evergreen society. He is Andrew Scott, Professor of Economics at the London Business School. His other roles include being a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and a consulting scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Longevity.

Andrew’s latest book is entitled “The Longevity Imperative: Building a Better Society for Healthier, Longer Lives”. Commendations for the book include this from the political economist Daron Acemoglu, “A must-read book with an important message and many lessons”, and this from the historian Niall Ferguson, “Persuasive, uplifting and wise”. 

Selected follow-ups:

• Personal website of Andrew Scott
• Andrew Scott at the London Business School
• The book The Longevity Imperative: How to Build a Healthier and More Productive Society to Support Our Longer Lives
• Longevity, the 56 trillion dollar opportunity, with Andrew Scott - episode 40 in this series
• Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2100
• Thomas Robert Malthus - Wikipedia
• DALYs (Disability-adjusted life years) and QALYs (Quality-adjusted life years) - Wikipedia
• VSL (Value of Statistical Life) - Wikipedia
• The economic value of targeting aging - paper in Nature Aging, co-authored by Andrew Scott, Martin Ellison, and David Sinclair
• A great-grandfather from Merseyside has become the world's oldest living man - BBC, 5th April 2024

Related quotations:

• Aging is "...revealed and made manifest only by the most unnatural experiment of prolonging an animal's life by sheltering it from the hazards of its ordinary existence" - Peter Medawar, 1951
• "To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and, therefore, so much less natural than the others; ’tis the last and extremest sort of dying: and the more remote, the less to be hoped for" - Michel de Montaigne, 1580

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0

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