Back in November of 2021, Stanford University’s Center on Longevity issued a report that caught my eye. The report, titled The New Map of Life: 100 Years to Thrive, details what we can expect moving forward as our human longevity continues to increase.
The report begins with a startling statement: “In the United States, demographers predict that as many as half of today’s 5-year-olds can expect to live to the age of 100.”
The report goes on to say that:
“By the middle of this century, this once unattainable milestone may become the norm for newborns, continuing a remarkable trend that saw human life expectancies double between 1900 and 2000, and still rising in this century, despite the grievous toll of the Covid-19 pandemic. Longevity is one of the greatest achievements in human history, brought about by reductions in infant mortality, advances in sanitation and medicine, public education, and rising standards of living. Yet the change came about so quickly that the social institutions, economic policies, and social norms that evolved when people lived for half as long are no longer up to the task.
We see a huge opportunity. In 2018, the Stanford Center on Longevity launched an initiative called The New Map of Life, believing that one of the most profound transformations of the human experience calls for equally momentous and creative changes in the ways we lead these longer lives. We make a clear distinction between aging, the biological process, and longevity, the measure of long life. The Center’s goal is not to advocate for longer life—a phenomenon that is well underway—rather, it is to identify ways to enhance the quality of those century-long lives, so that people experience a sense of belonging, purpose, and worth at all ages and stages.”
The report addresses eight big ideas when addressing increased human longevity (I’ve included a brief summary of each big idea direct from the report):
- Age diversity is a net positive.
“This era of unprecedented age diversity means society benefits from a complementarity of skills and abilities that people develop over their lives. The speed, strength, and zest for discovery common in younger people, combined with the emotional intelligence and experience prevalent among older people, create possibilities for families, communities, and workplaces that haven’t existed before. Having more older people means that children can receive more attention from grandparents or other caring adults. Multigenerational families can share financial and social resources, including housing and caregiving, deepening social responsibility and engagement across generations.”
- Invest in Future Centenarians to Deliver Big Returns
“A longevity perspective instead views the 30 extra years of life as a dividend that can be strategically distributed across all stages of life. Mile[1]stones, expectations, and social norms will shift as a result. Must young people graduate from high school by 18 and hurtle across the educational finish line, diploma in hand by their early or mid 20s, to achieve success over a 100-year life? Why not have learning be a lifelong pursuit that is just as likely to take place outside a real or virtual classroom as inside one? At a time of labor short[1]ages, why do we expect 65-year-old knowledge workers to leave the workforce, just as many achieve peak performance? Is a chronological number even the best way to define “age” when science offers so many new tools to measure vitality and health?”
- Align Health Spans to Life Spans
“While median life spans have increased dramatically over the past century, our health spans – defined as the years in which people are healthy, mobile, mentally sharp, and free of pain – have not kept pace. Health span should be the metric for determining how, when, and where longevity efforts are most effective. We can use health span as a public health objective that gives healthcare providers and policymakers a more detailed and relevant picture of the conditions, needs, and disparities that contribute directly to longevity differences among populations.”
- Prepare to Be Amazed by the Future of Aging
“Whether longer health spans are realized through investments in early childhood healthcare, public health, telemedicine, geroscience, or precision and personalized medicine—or all of the above—these advances promise to alter the future of aging. They can delay or prevent the onset of age-related diseases and conditions, improve early detection of health risks, and help to reduce the cost of delivering healthcare as people age. Combined, these opportunities have the potential to redefine old age from a period associated with illness, frailty, and dependence into yet another life stage with potential for vitality, independence, and continued contributions to society.”
- Work More Years with More Flexibility
“Over the course of 100-year lives, we can expect to work 60 years or more. But we won’t work as we do now, cramming 40-hour weeks and 50 work weeks a year (for those who can afford vacation) into lives impossibly packed from morning until night with parenting, family, caregiving, schooling, and other obligations. Rather than muddling through these all-too-familiar time constraints, imagine more flexible, less sequential routes through all the roles, opportunities, and obligations that life brings.”
- Learn Throughout Life
“If children are to be truly educated for the chal[1]lenges and opportunities that their longer lives will bring, we must tackle two simultaneous challenges. First, we must close the pervasive opportunity gaps in the current educational system that pre[1]vent so many children from fulfilling their potential due to racial or socioeconomic barriers, such as living in unsafe, unhealthy neighborhoods, attend[1]ing poorly resourced schools, or being the first in their families to try to attend college. Second, we must create new pathways for learning that are less tethered to formal institutions, along with credentials for the resulting skills that are recognized by employers and society more broadly.”
- Build Longevity-Ready Communities
“It is important to assess potential value through the lens of longevity: Which investments will produce the highest returns for the greatest number of people over the course of a century? By this standard alone, closing the digital divide will deliver returns for lifelong learners of all ages, increased labor productivity, access to healthcare, and greater equity for low-income and rural communities. More broadly, we see the opportunity for an “infrastructure triple play” to meet three overlapping sets of needs: NEED 1: Making investments to advance human potential, especially for Americans who have been held back by racism or poverty, creating conditions for a healthier, more productive, and economically competitive population. NEED 2: Reengineering U.S. infrastructure in preparation for longer human lives, with built environments that are more walkable and provide access to mass transit, healthcare, and opportunities for lifelong learning, and that foster intergenerational connections. NEED 3: Investing to help communities adapt and protect their residents from the increasingly severe effects of climate change.”
- Life Transitions Are a Feature, Not a Bug
“The New Map of Life promotes fluidity in the timing of life’s milestones so that there is more time to savor the benefits of childhood, to establish stable personal and professional pillars during early adulthood, to have flexibility for parenting and caregiving as those responsibilities arise, and to reset the course as needed or desired during middle age through upskilling, reskilling, and career changes. These options for thriving throughout the early stages of life contribute cumulatively to the likelihood of feeling engaged and valued, healthy and financially secure, in later adulthood.”
Wow! There’s a lot to read and think about here. It seems like we need to ask ourselves what the implications for our schools, or possibly a different learning system, might be, as all of this is happening (and it’s clear most of it is happening right now.)
Tomorrow, I’ll share my thoughts on what learning needs to look like to support something like “100 Years to Thrive.”
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
Leave a comment