Influence of Aging Science on Global Wealth Management

Abstract

Modern longevity transforms long-held assumptions about working, saving, investing, and spending—creating both new opportunities and new challenges for wealth management in the 21st century. To adapt to these shifts, our aging world must evolve its strategies and tools to help people maximize their healthy, productive years, work longer and differently beyond traditional retirement age should they choose to do so, manage caregiving responsibilities, and use a range of tools to plan, save, and invest for longer lives. Employers, policymakers, financial services companies, and individuals can all take steps to enable this new landscape of greater wealth from greater longevity, where people enjoy physical health linked directly to financial health.

Physical health is inextricably linked to financial health (Brown Weida et al. 2020; Bialowolski et al. 2021). Given this simple but profound connection, geroscience advances that expand the average human life span—and, perhaps more importantly, the number of healthy years in that life span—have dramatic implications for how people work, live, and manage wealth in our 21st century era of long lives. In a world of more old than young, where more people than ever are living to 90+, we must reshape our assumptions, models, and tools to meet individual and societal financial needs—just as we must reorient healthcare models to enable healthy aging.

Our goal should be a virtuous cycle of longer, healthier lives and greater wealth. However, this requires shifting wealth management to reflect the new dynamics of longevity, such as people's ability and desire to keep working past traditional retirement age, the need to fund those additional years and sometimes decades of life, the growing demand for and costs of caregiving, and the rich financial benefit of healthy aging. These shifts present both new opportunities and new challenges, which demand action from a range of stakeholders—not just the financial services industry, but also policymakers, employers, health systems, families, and individuals.

How we plan and pay for our long lives—generating wealth while keeping costs sustainable—will determine whether widespread prosperity accompanies modern longevity in the 21st century.

SHIFTS: THE NEW FINANCIAL LANDSCAPE IN AN AGE OF LONGEVITY

Today's longevity—enabled by ongoing advances in medicine and public health and about to be influenced by geroscience—reshapes long-held assumptions about working, saving, investing, and spending. Global life expectancy has increased steadily in the past century, with the average global citizen today living approximately 20 years longer than in 1960 (World Bank DataBank 2022, data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN). Among the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries and in many advanced economies, it is now normal for an increasing proportion of the population to live for 30 years or more after 60. With this unprecedented longevity comes shifts in people's behaviors, preferences, and needs that our current financial planning and infrastructure must shift to appropriately reflect.

Leaders in the financial services industry are pioneering a new way forward. Lorna Sabbia (Sabbia 2022), managing director of retirement and personal wealth solutions at Bank of America, neatly summarizes the evolving landscape:

Longer lifespans don't guarantee a financially secure later life, however. If anything, in the absence of significant planning, extreme longevity may make financial security harder to attain. In an effort to change that, a growing number of financial advisory and service providers are turning to a new, more holistic mode of thinking about personal economics. The trend is centered on one key concept: financial wellness.

The main idea behind financial wellness is that individuals can plan for their financial future in a more comprehensive way than in decades past, when they focused primarily on the dollar amounts in their bank or retirement accounts. An emphasis on financial wellness, by contrast, reflects a deeper understanding of where one's money is now and where it will flow in the future, ideally helping individuals meet their short-term needs while they save for their unique mid- and long-term priorities. Wellness is also about establishing healthy behaviors: financially sound savings, investment, and spending practices that will benefit individuals over the course of a long life.

In response, industry leaders like Bank of America are building tools to help individuals ensure their financial wellness, such as free financial education platforms for people at all life stages and tools to track and assess financial wellness throughout life (Better Money Habits 2022, bettermoneyhabits.bankofamerica.com/en; Life Plan 2022, promotions.bankofamerica.com/digitalbanking/mobilebanking/lifeplan; Financial Wellness for Employees 2022, business.bofa.com/en-us/content/workplace-benefits/solutions-and-services/financial-wellness-for-employees.html).

These kinds of tools can help people to navigate five key shifts brought by modern longevity:

1. People must now pay for lives that may stretch to 100.

   Absent the needed changes to financial planning and wealth management, longer lives can pose significant financial burdens on underprepared individuals. Simply put, people must now find ways to pay for those extra years or decades of life through a combination of working longer, saving more, investing wisely, and minimizing health and care costs. This comes at the same time as the shift away from the 20th century defined benefit plan toward defined contribution plans that place greater responsibility on the individual to plan and maintain lifelong financial wellness.

   Currently, many individuals are concerned that their financial strategies are not keeping up. Globally, just 42% of workers say that “I always make sure that I am saving for retirement” (www.aegon.com/siteassets/the-new-social-contract-future-proofing-retirement.pdf). Fully one-third say that they are not currently saving for retirement, and 44% believe that future generations of retirees will be worse off than those currently in retirement (www.aegon.com/siteassets/the-new-social-contract-future-proofing-retirement.pdf).

   Of course, even the assumptions of “working versus retirement” or “retirement saving strategies” rest on outdated 20th century models of work and life. In a world where people have a greater chance than ever to live to ages 90+—with health and productivity into their 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond—it simply no longer makes sense for many people to enter full retirement in their early 60s, if ever.

2. People can stay healthy and productive for decades beyond traditional retirement age.

   Indeed, longer lives are creating new patterns in people's behaviors and preferences for work. Not only are people capable of working for longer, but most now envision a phased transition where they continue working past the traditional retirement age (www.aegon.com/siteassets/the-new-social-contract-future-proofing-retirement.pdf). Contrary to long-standing conventional views of retirement, 60 or 65 should no longer represent the most common view of a permanent transition from full-time work to full-time leisure.

   Indeed, the majority of workers surveyed globally say that they plan to continue working in some capacity after traditional retirement (www.aegon.com/contentassets/6724d008b6e14fa1a4cedb41811f748a/retirement-readiness-survey-2018.pdf). This could include shifting to more flexible or part-time hours, taking on consulting or teaching roles, or launching “encore careers” (i.e., entering a new field or kind of job after an initial career). Some older workers seek positions with more flexible hours and ways of working, while others may seek work that is more meaningful and purpose-driven. In one example, almost half of Canadian men between the ages of 60 and 64 chose to reenter the workforce within 10 years of their retirement (Sullivan and Al Ariss 2019). In the United States, nearly one-quarter of workers plan to “never retire,” simply continuing to work in the same capacity as they always have (www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/retirement-1-4-dont-plan-retire-despite-aging-workforce/1671687001).

   The labor market is currently ripe for this undertapped pool of talent. While ageism and outdated policies have long held back older workers (World Health Organization 2021), organizations may rethink their approach to find the skilled workers that they need. Nearly 70% of employers globally find it challenging to fill open positions (go.manpowergroup.com/hubfs/Talent%20Shortage%202021/MPG_2021_Outlook_Survey-Global.pdf), and a growing skills gap constrains STEM, manufacturing, and a variety of other sectors. This expands the opportunity for older adults to continue working long past traditional retirement age—matching both personal preferences and financial necessity.

3. Chronic illness and ageism—not individual preference—prematurely forces many people out of the workforce.

   If older adults want to stay in the workforce, what is forcing them out? The answer, sadly, is often ageism or chronic illness. Declining physical health is the most often cited retirement concern among workers around the world, and 39% of current retirees had to leave the workforce sooner than they had planned for these reasons (www.aegon.com/contentassets/6724d008b6e14fa1a4cedb41811f748a/retirement-readiness-survey-2018.pdf). For this group, their own ill health was the most common reason that they left the workforce, while someone else's ill health was the third most common reason. Yet just one-third of workers have a back-up plan for income if they are forced to stop working prematurely (www.aegon.com/contentassets/6724d008b6e14fa1a4cedb41811f748a/retirement-readiness-survey-2018.pdf).

   The second most common reason for premature retirement is job loss—often linked to ageism. According to the United Nations and the World Health Organization, half the people worldwide hold moderately or highly ageist attitudes (www.who.int/teams/social-determinants-of-health/demographic-change-and-healthy-ageing/combatting-ageism/global-report-on-ageism). This directly impacts older workers. According to a ProPublica and Urban Institute analysis, over half of older U.S. workers are laid off or likely forced out of a job at least once (Gosselin 2018).

   The financial consequences can be devastating. Just one in ten of these workers ever achieves a level of compensation on par with their earnings before their forced retirement (Gosselin 2018). This ageism—reflected even in the commonly accepted definition for “working age”—calls for a concerted, multi-stakeholder effort to reshape societal biases.

4. The demand for caregiving is rapidly growing.

   Modern longevity is precipitating a major inversion in global population pyramids. OECD countries, in particular, are seeing a transformation of their populations to “more old than young” for the first time, leading to an unprecedented demand for caregiving. By 2030, in the United States, there will be just four potential family caregivers per older adult (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2019). By 2050, Japan's ratio of people ages 15–64 to those over 64, for example, will reach just 1:1 (Kaneda and Tsai 2010).

   As the often underappreciated and undermeasured cost of elder care rises concomitantly, the challenge to families and workplaces also grows. Caregiving responsibilities can push middle-aged and older employees to cut back their hours, pass on promotions, or exit the workforce altogether. These impacts can prevent caregivers from maximizing their income and savings in their prime earning years, making the cost trajectory of caregiving even more difficult. The financial impacts disproportionately affect women, who provide the majority of unpaid care around the world (www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/csw61/redistribute-unpaid-work).

5. Health and elder care costs can be the decisive factor in financial well-being.

   Healthy aging is not just a health concern but also a financial imperative. With greater longevity comes greater risk of chronic health conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer's disease. The costs associated with these conditions reflect some of the highest categories of spending for older adults, families, health systems, and national budgets overall.

   In the European Union, an estimated €700 billion, or 70% to 80% of all healthcare spending, goes toward the management of chronic diseases (Seychell 2022). As more people live longer, the amount and complexity of care needed per person will rise as well.

   Even in the absence of chronic health conditions, the costs of aging can be overwhelming. A 2019 survey of long-term care services in the United States revealed that the median cost for a private room in a nursing home now exceeds $100,000 per year (www.genworth.com/aging-and-you/finances/cost-of-care.html). Strategies to maximize people's healthy years and address the gaps in the healthcare workforce are therefore a crucial component of managing the financial needs associated with longer lives.

OPPORTUNITIES: HELPING INDIVIDUALS MAXIMIZE THE HEALTH–WEALTH LINK

These shifts define the new landscape for wealth in the 21st century. By updating our assumptions, models, and tools to reflect these dynamics, our societies can seize a range of opportunities to help us stay well, maintain a level of financial security that matches our longevity, and thrive.

Geroscience Advances Are Designed to Embrace Healthy Aging and Maximize Financial Security

Enjoying a healthy, financially secure life depends on expanding “health span” to match our life span. This means maximizing the number of years where an individual is healthy, productive, and largely free from the constraints and costs imposed by chronic disease. The scientific and medical advances of geroscience provide us with the knowledge and therapeutic interventions to achieve an extended health span. Now, individuals need to incorporate these advances into their lifestyles as they begin to emerge, as well as their plans and expectations for their life course.

Work and Learn, Longer and Differently, beyond Traditional Retirement Age

It is past time to “retire retirement.” Rather than the outdated learn-work-retire model, societies need to embrace a far more diverse, flexible, and empowering approach to how we use our extra measure of life. That may mean having the choice and financial resources necessary to return to school in middle age, shifting into a coaching or consulting role later in a career, or launching multiple careers throughout the life course, with periods of learning, volunteering, or caregiving in between.

Use a Range of Tools to Plan, Save, and Invest for a Longer Life

Whatever the path, individuals will need to plan for how income, investments, and savings can last longer. They will need updated tools from the financial services industry and their employers, as well as policymakers, who can collaborate to shape offerings for the new financial demands of modern longevity.

Find New Models and Solutions for More Efficient, Equal Caregiving

The need for caregiving is one of the greatest health and financial challenges facing individuals, families, and health systems. To achieve the necessary scale, we need new and more innovative caregiving models that are far more efficient, without placing an undue and unequal burden on family caregivers (the current default in most cases). Developing and scaling these models will not only be critical to manage the direct costs of care—it will also enable more caregivers to remain in the workforce longer, protecting their own lifelong financial wellness and engendering greater social equity.

STRATEGIES: KEY ACTIONS FOR EMPLOYERS, POLICYMAKERS, THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY, AND INDIVIDUALS

Employers, policymakers, the financial services industry, and individuals can all take steps to enable this new landscape of greater wealth from greater longevity. A cross-sector, collaborative approach is essential for achieving the scale of the required changes.

Employers

Employers and the workplace are an ideal center for resources that help people embrace lifelong financial wellness and healthy aging. Organizations that prioritize this approach will stand out in the talent marketplace and support greater innovation and productivity from multigenerational teams.

Evolve Organizational Culture and Working Models to Enable Older Talent to Stay Longer, with Age-Friendly Workplaces and Options for More Flexible Roles

Older workers are a critical pool of top talent, with deep expertise, decades of experience, proven skills, and a facility for teaching and mentoring. When integrated into a multigenerational workforce, these teams are found to be more productive, innovative, and engaged (The Global Coalition on Aging 2018). Yet, many employers are still not taking proactive steps to recruit, hire, and retain these invaluable workers. This is a missed opportunity for businesses—and a threat to older workers’ financial well-being.

Several principles can help employers to attract older workers and build multigenerational teams. First, workplaces should be age-neutral, with an inclusive environment that is free from ageism. This includes both the physical environment, with technologies, facilities, equipment, and services that meet the needs of older workers, and the organizational culture, which should recognize the contributions of all workers. Organizations can also do more to promote lifelong learning and participation, as well as support older workers with healthy aging and their responsibilities as caregivers.

Strengthen Benefits for Employee Caregivers, Including Leave Policies, Care Resources, Planning Tools, and Flexible Work Options

Caregiving for older family members is quickly becoming one of the most important workplace issues of our time. Organizations that proactively support employee caregivers will seize a vital opportunity to attract, hire, and retain top talent, who are looking for these supportive policies as they make employment decisions. Just as support for parents became “table stakes” in the 20th century, support for those caring for older family members will become vital for talent strategy in the 21st century.

Organizations can adopt a range of policies and programs to support caregivers. Inclusive leave policies that can be used for adult care are an important starting point. Forward-looking organizations are also providing employees with free or subsidized care resources, such as care planning, emergency back-up care, and consultations on the legal and financial aspects of care (globalcoalitiononaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/GCOA_BAC-Spotlight-on-Caregiving_Employer-Practices-Through-a-Policy-Lens_FINAL.pdf). Flexible work policies, including the rise of remote and hybrid work during the COVID-19 pandemic, can also help employee caregivers balance their professional and familial responsibilities (see Box 1).

BOX 1. THE IMPACTS AND LESSONS OF COVID-19.

COVID-19 has increased the urgency of implementing many of the strategies outlined throughout the literature.

• During the pandemic, many older people left the workforce earlier than they had expected, threatening their long-term financial well-being (Umpierrez 2022).

• The pandemic has also increased the strain on family caregivers and healthcare workers, even as it has led to delays or disruptions in routine care for chronic conditions.

Together, these twin factors threaten to widen the already severe gap between the need and supply for care with sobering financial and healthcare implications.

Further, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the vital importance of healthy aging, while also generating new burdens, strains, and costs for older adults, caregivers, and health systems. The dramatically higher risk of COVID-19 for older adults, especially those with chronic conditions, demonstrates why a proactive, preventive, and holistic approach to not just managing disease, but promoting health, is so critical in an aging world. This is also a key strategy to avoid costly acute care like hospitalizations, which threaten to generate unsustainably high costs for families, health systems, and societies.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has also driven new models and innovations at the time when they are needed most.

• The rise of remote and flexible work models can help older workers to continue working in new ways for longer, while also providing vital support to employee caregivers.

• Rapid adoption of telehealth, remote care, and AI-enabled digital health technologies have validated and expanded innovative tools for a “predict and prevent” approach to healthcare.

By embracing these new models, societies can seize new opportunities for health and wealth, while driving a sustainable long-term recovery.

Provide Access to Tools that Help Employees Start Saving and Investing Early, Easily Enroll and Increase Contributions, and Plan for the Finances Required for Healthcare

In the era of the 401(k), many workers will turn to their employer for access to tools for saving and investing, as well as the communications and financial literacy to guide wise usage of those tools. Employers take this responsibility seriously—but many can still do more to help support saving and investing for lifelong financial wellness.

The key is not just helping older workers save more but engaging workers of all ages to save throughout their career—from programs helping young workers to invest even while paying off student debt to programs that help middle-aged workers keep saving even amid the expenses of caregiving. Communications can emphasize the importance of saving and investing and underscore the potential high costs of later-life care, while specific planning tools can help to understand and prepare for these scenarios. Where possible, employers can also use “auto-enroll” and “auto-escalate” options to help workers automatically save as their default.

Prioritize Healthy Aging in the Workplace—Pushing beyond Diet and Fitness Campaigns to Include Screening for Common Age-Related Conditions, Adult Immunizations, and Brain Health Campaigns

Organizations can also play a role in helping older workers stay healthy as they age. While fitness campaigns and healthy foods have become fixtures of the workplace, there is significant opportunity to introduce additional offerings that do even more for employees’ physical and mental health.

Employers can sponsor screening for common age-related conditions, such as osteoporosis or vision health. Adult immunization campaigns can help to avoid preventable illness and resulting productivity losses for conditions like influenza, pneumonia, and shingles. Brain health efforts can equip older workers to reduce their own risk for cognitive decline, addressing one of the most difficult age-related health challenges.

Policymakers

Policymakers at every level can take action to tailor policies for the emerging landscape of longevity. The most effective policies will be coordinated across sectors and jurisdictions.

Make Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) More Easily Accessible and Enable Auto-Enrollment and Auto-Escalation in Employer-Sponsored 401(k)s and Other Financial Vehicles

HSAs can be a vital tool to help people prepare for the healthcare costs of aging. Policymakers can take action to make HSAs more easily accessible and attractive as a choice for individuals. Additionally, in some geographies, policy changes may be needed to expand the types of expenses that fall within HSA's qualified distributions, such as home care expenses.

As highlighted by the field of behavioral economics, often the most effective “nudge” for wise decisions is to make them the default (Beshears and Kosowsky 2020). In the area of saving and investing, this can be accomplished by defaulting employees into making contributions and escalating those contributions over time. However, in many geographies, policymakers still need to enact policies that enable employers to provide these default options.

Align Policies to Include Different Kinds of Family Caregiving, with Resources, Leave Options, Tax Credits, and Other Support for Those Who Care for Older Adults

As much as employers’ caregiving policies need to expand beyond a focus solely on childcare, so too public policies must evolve to reflect the growing number of people who care for older family members.

Ideally, every country should develop and implement a comprehensive national strategy that knits together the different policies, programs, and resources to support family caregivers. This can include paid family leave benefits for all types of caregivers, caregiving “allowances” to help cover the costs of care, tax breaks for those who care for older adults, and easier navigation of resources and support services. Government agencies can also explore multigenerational care services for children and older adults, enabling more efficient and accessible care from a single organization or location.

Support Access to Adult Immunization, Health Screenings, and Telehealth Options

Investment in healthy aging and related innovations can deliver on policymakers’ goals and ensure the sustainability of both national and individual healthcare spending. Currently, chronic conditions account for the vast majority of health spending, with costly acute care like emergency room visits and hospitalizations driving much of the cost (www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/about/costs/index.htm; www.efpia.eu/about-medicines/use-of-medicines/healthcare-systems/introduction). For individuals and families, these emergency costs can devastate financial wellness, especially in someone's later decades. For health systems and national budgets, these costs threaten to become unsustainable as populations age and longer lives become more common.

There are a number of policy tools available. Health systems can drive concerted adult immunization campaigns, addressing low rates of vaccination and avoiding costs, hospitalizations, and deaths. Health agencies can implement nationwide health screenings for conditions like osteoporosis, heart disease, and dementia, helping individuals to receive needed care earlier and avoid health crises. Health systems can also sustain telehealth and remote care options, which can provide care more efficiently and just as effectively in many cases.

For all of these areas, policymakers should adopt a lens that views preventive health measures and healthy aging as an investment in people's physical and financial well-being—ultimately defraying long-term costs.

The Financial Services Industry

Financial services companies can evolve wealth management to reflect the needs and opportunities of longevity. Several actions point a way forward:

Integrate the Needs and Opportunities of Modern Longevity into Financial Planning and Financial Literacy Materials

Financial services companies can play a vital role in alerting employers, families, and individuals to the new financial realities associated with longer lives. There is a particular need for tools that help people learn about, plan for, and assess their financial wellness throughout every stage of life.

For example, Bank of America's Better Money Habits platform offers financial education and tools that can be used by people at any age (bettermoneyhabits.bankofamerica.com/en). Through this platform, people can use the “Life Plan” tool to set and track their financial goals, and the “Financial Wellness Tracker” to assess progress toward those goals.

These kinds of tools, as well as training for financial professionals, should consider those who face greater financial challenges, such as caregivers, women, and people who have exited or are looking to reenter the workforce. These efforts can center on strategies to help people overcome financial disparities and ensure they have the tools they need for financial wellness.

Provide “Financial Gerontology” Training to Prepare Financial Advisors to Provide Skilled Guidance to Older Clients

The financial services industry must equip workers for a growing number of clients in their 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond. A strictly financial perspective alone is likely insufficient, as health, work, purpose, social connection, and other topics all inform financial well-being, priorities, and decisions.

Financial gerontology training can help to prepare professionals to understand these topics and offer more effective, age-informed counsel. For example, this training might include information on how to help people navigate decisions such as whether to move to a lower-cost community or how to pay for care, as well as how to respond if a client has signs of cognitive decline.

Consider How Plan Design and New Financial Tools Can Help Individuals to Pay for Longer Lives

Modern longevity also has important implications for the assumptions that are effectively “baked in” to 401(k)s and other tools. Traditionally, these models assume that individuals will shift from contributing to spending (or, decumulation) around the time of 20th-century retirement age. However, for many individuals, this assumption no longer holds, as their period of contributions will continue long past traditional retirement age.

Further, there is also a need for tools and materials to help people manage and wisely spend their accumulated savings in their later decades. In many cases, individuals may, in essence, receive their life savings when they retire, but without much guidance on how to effectively manage this sum. These tools for decumulation are a missing piece and an opportunity for leadership in the financial services industry.

Individuals

In the age of longevity, individuals are empowered to live, work, and learn in new ways throughout their lives. Planning for healthy aging and financial security are key to seizing those opportunities.

Consider How to Work, Learn, Save, and Invest across the Course of the Modern Life Span

The policies, tools, and strategies outlined above ultimately aim to empower individuals to take control of their own physical and financial health in today's era of long lives. For all of us as individuals, the first step is recognizing the tremendous opportunities associated with the modern rise in longevity: to explore different jobs and fields, launch second careers, pursue later-life education and training, and, fundamentally, make a bigger impact for longer. While doing this, we can also earn, invest, and save more—positioning us to find greater fulfillment throughout our lives.

Embrace Strategies for Healthy Aging, Including New Findings from the Field of Geroscience

Just as the United Nations and WHO's Decade of Healthy Ageing prompts systemic change, individuals can take concrete, everyday steps to reap the full benefits of modern longevity. Healthy lifestyles, proactive management of chronic conditions, adult immunization, and other steps for healthy aging all have a key role to play. Individuals can also advocate for themselves with providers and health systems, seeking out the kind of proactive, preventive care, further enabled by digital health technologies, that best supports healthy aging. By doing so, as geroscience interventions eventually come online, they will be applied to a healthier population, enhancing their effects.

Plan for the Possibility of Expensive Health and Care Needs

While individuals should strive for healthy aging, we must also plan for the realistic elevated costs of age-related illness. People should consider their backup plan if they are forced to leave the workforce early due to poor health, as well as how they might pay for an extended period of care for themselves or a loved one. This can underscore the importance of proactive planning and saving, as well as prompt more creative thinking about work, life, and care.

Harness Tools for Lifelong Financial Wellness

As policymakers, employers, and the financial services industry update and create new tools, individuals can make sure that they are maximizing the value of these tools. As a starting point, asking human resources professionals and financial services professionals for help can uncover options and benefits that are already available to many individuals. This includes not just financial tools, but also resources for physical and mental health, caregiving support, lifelong learning, career development—in short, all the aspects of life that ultimately shape financial wellness.

CONCLUSION: ACHIEVING WHAT GEROSCIENCE MAKES POSSIBLE

As geroscience transforms the health span of current and future generations, we must enact changes that are just as transformative for our wealth. Together, the actions outlined above offer a pathway to widespread prosperity in a 21st century world defined by healthy longevity.

What could that world look like? It is one where people stay healthy and productive for much longer than ever before, with older workers emerging as a highly valued, sought-after source of talent in a multigenerational workforce. It is one where individuals are planning for the costs of longer lives from the very beginning of their careers, taking advantage of a raft of new financial tools and well-informed financial professionals. It is one where health systems take a predict-and-prevent approach to well-being, helping people to manage chronic conditions and enjoy greater quality of life with better financial well-being.

We all have a part to play in building that world. Now is the time to forge collaborations and take action toward a shared vision for health and wealth in the 21st century.