A baby girl born in Italy today can expect to live until 83.7 years of age, while a baby boy will live 77.9 years on average. Given the current levels of fertility, those born today are most often single children. Even if he/she won't have neither siblings nor cousins, he/she will be able to rely on his/her parents for long: at the age of 65, at least half of the new generations will have either one or both of his/her parents alive, many of whom will be a hundred years old.
In the early 2000s, centenarians were already 10,000 in Italy, and almost 40,000 in the EU. Until 2050, their number is expected to double every decade. Tomorrow your hundredth birthday may well be just a step toward a life completing its cycle in the 110/120-year range. Reaching such thresholds won't be a rare event anymore, but at the same time it will harder to portray an old person as surrounded by numerous children and grandchildren, since the vertical family (grandgrandparents, grandparents, parents, child) is in the process of supplanting the horizontal family.
It may seem paradoxical, but prolongation of life, which has traditionally been portrayed as conquest for humankind, finds society unprepared, since social and health policies, as well as social security systems, have not yet been redesigned to match the new demographic realities.
On the one hand, the increase in life expectancy prolongs the consumption lifetime cycle and especially augments spending in health care, especially for the likely higher incidence of chronic pathologies among the population. It is a known fact that around 75% of average individual spending on health is done in the very last years of one's existence: well-founded thus are the doubts on the present financial solidity of the system, and on the capability of public and private actors to cope with the new situation without an increase in the propensity to save.
Protecting the health of the elderly requires two different types of action: one to maintain individual autonomy at highest possible levels, both from physical and mental points of view, the other aimed at coping with disability and dependency risks, which today typically affect people aged 85 or more. There is still very limited recourse to insurance coverage to protect oneself from long-term care risk.
According to the European Commission, it is possible to reduce the burden of such demographic evolution on social expenditure by increasing the work opportunities of older workers, and extending the work life beyond 65 years of age, possibly by working part-time. Many countries have taken action to align the national context to such new directive. In Italy, there are presently 350,000 employees who are more than 65 years old, about 3.5% of the corresponding age bracket, whereas in the UK the percentage is double. More work means more savings, and thus stronger sustainability of the system. It is commendable that Italian media increasingly insist on a healthy lifestyle in order to grow old more gracefully, but this is not the only form of prevention against the uncertainties of old age.
by Carlo Maccheroni,
Full Professor of Mathematical Economics, Bocconi University