A five-year-old today has an extremely good chance of living to 90 and beyond. To cope, we need an economic and cultural revolution aimed at changing how we age.
Extending life expectancy was one of the outstanding achievements of the 20th century. A baby born in 1900, when infectious disease outbreaks were a regular occurrence and chronic diseases like cancer, dementia and heart disease were barely understood, lived just 32 years, on average. A baby born in 2021, after more than a century of modern medical research, will live to an average of 71.