What if you live to be 100? Seven ways to improve aging for everyone.

By Richard Eisenberg

People are living much longer, but we're not doing a good job of adapting to longer lives

You likely know that people today, generally speaking, are living longer lives -- sometimes much longer lives -- than in the past. The average life expectancy in 1930 was 59; now it's 76, down slightly in the past few years.

But how well are we doing with adapting to those longer lives, including potentially much longer retirements?

Turns out, not so well, according to the experts I recently heard at the Stanford Center on Longevity's two-day 2023 Century Summit, where I also moderated a panel on funding women's longer lives.

"We wanted to get together people who are interested in longevity in specific domains who never would have crossed paths," said Martha Deevy, the center's associate director.

Read: These 4 things have given me a happy retirement

The uplifting news from the summit, however, is that there are a variety of ways employers, financial-services companies, housing developers, policymakers, and even you and I can flip the script on aging to help us live into our 80s, 90s and perhaps 100s. All it will take is the initiative to do them.

"My fear is we sleepwalk through this era, when we need to radically rethink life and how we live it," Laura Carstensen, the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity and architect of its New Map of Life initiative, said at the fourth annual Century Summit.

Here's what the summit speakers said could help, and what's already happening to chart the new map of life:

Better longevity and financial literacy

Several speakers noted that Americans' perceptions of how long they'll live are woefully off target. "We don't have longevity literacy," said Chip Conley, the founder of Modern Elder Academy, known as MEA, a program in Mexico for adults going through midlife transitions.

A new report from Boston College's Center for Retirement Research bears this out. Many people in their 50s and 60s are pessimistic about their survival probabilities, the study said, citing mortality ages that are years shorter than the reality for people their age.

Read: Retirement isn't a destination -- it's a journey with three key stops

Knowing how long you're likely to live is "a fundamental part of planning for retirement," said Annamaria Lusardi, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

People are taking a "longevity risk" by not knowing how long they're likely to live, said Surya Kolluri, head of the TIAA Institute. His survey research has also revealed how little people know about their own retirement savings. "Nearly one-fourth of people are unsure how much retirement savings they have," he said.

Congress may try to help improve Americans' financial literacy. Rep. Young Kim, a California Republican, told the summit audience that she recently helped launch the bipartisan House Financial Literacy and Wealth Creation Caucus.

More 401(k) access and automatic enrollment

Half of private-sector workers -- 57 million people -- lack access to workplace savings plans, said Anne Ackerley, a managing director at BlackRock (BLK) and head of the asset-management firm's retirement group. But when people do have 401(k) plans, she noted, they're 15 to 20 times more likely to save than when they don't.

"401(k) access is the No. 1 way to make saving for retirement easier," Ackerley said.

One salvation: Five states -- California, Illinois, Massachusetts (for nonprofits), Oregon and Washington -- have implemented retirement-savings programs for residents who aren't offered them through work. Another 14 states have enacted legislation for such programs.

Auto-enrollment -- when a worker automatically contributes a percentage of pay into a 401(k) plan unless they opt out -- also has been shown to greatly increase chances that people save for retirement consistently.

The financial-services firm Vanguard found that the average participation rate is 91% with auto-enrollment, and 18% without. But nearly two in five 401(k) plans don't offer auto-enrollment, according to the Plan Sponsor Council of America.

Gender and racial equity in aging

"I worry the current retirement system doesn't serve women and people of color," Ackerley said.

Women retire with 30% less income than men, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And, Ackerley noted, 26% of women retire into poverty. Aside from the gender pay gap, women also often work in jobs without 401(k)s or, if they have them, can't contribute when they leave the paid workforce for family caregiving responsibilities.

Racial pay disparities make it harder for some people of color to accumulate savings, too, Ackerley said. In Kolluri's survey, 43% of Black respondents said they couldn't come up with $2,000 in an emergency.

From the archives (February 2023): Why it's so hard for Black Americans to save for retirement -- and how the pandemic escalated the racial wealth gap

Raymond Jetson, the president and CEO of the Baton Rouge, La., nonprofit MetroMorphosis, explained why he created his new Aging While Black initiative. "There are huge disparities that need to be addressed to move the conversation on aging beyond the homogeneous, monolithic conversation," Jetson said.

A retirement bill of rights

TIAA is forming a coalition to create a four-part Retirement Bill of Rights.

TIAA's bill of rights says: "Every worker in America has the right to save for and achieve a financially secure retirement; every worker should have access to low-cost investment options that help provide ample income for a dignified retirement; every worker deserves clear information that allows them to compare saving and income options, make informed choices and meet their retirement goals; [and] the public and private sectors share responsibility for helping every worker access retirement income that will last the rest of their lives."

Addressing housing preferences and challenges

"We have an affordable-housing crisis in this country, and when you overlay longevity and seniors, we see a very disturbing picture that has changed over the years," Federal Housing Administration Commissioner Julia Gordon told the summit audience.

As many as 10 million households headed by seniors now pay more than 30% of their income for housing, and half of them pay more than 50%. "This used to be a coastal problem; now it's an everywhere problem," Gordon said.

The fastest-growing percentage of the United States' unhoused population is made up of seniors, Gordon said. What's more, fewer than 4% of all homes are accessible and adhere to principles of universal design.

The FHA is "throwing everything at the wall to increase the housing supply and affordability, as well as to create intergenerational living and make homes more accessible," Gordon said. One example: It's revising the financing system for manufactured homes to make them more affordable and better to live in.

"Many boomers and Gen Xers don't want to live in the kinds of retirement communities our parents lived in," Conley said. "We need to build intergenerational regenerative communities."

He'll be opening one in Mexico soon and plans to replicate it in Santa Fe, N.M., possibly disrupting the senior-housing industry.

Creating programs for older apprentices

Only 3% of apprentices in the U.S. are over 50 years old, said Claire Casey, the president of the AARP Foundation.

Carol Larson, a Stanford Center on Longevity senior research scholar, said after retiring from being CEO of the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, she wanted to help find California preschool teachers due to the state's new universal pre-K law. "There were state apprentice programs for the early-childhood field, but no one had thought about people 50-plus as a solution," she said.

At the Century Summit, Larson asked rhetorically: "Where is HR recruiting older people?" She's begun three pilots to create older apprentices for preschool.

Paying family caregivers and helping pay for long-term care

"We've got to find a way to recognize family caregiving as work," Ackerley said.

One way would be for employers to offer paid family leave. But only 11 states mandate paid family leave to bond with a new child or care for a seriously ill family member. Family caregivers in Washington state can apply to get paid by the state for their assistance, though residents aren't allowed to hire their spouse or partner.

Another idea floated by Ackerley: Social Security could credit unpaid time off for family caregiving toward accrual of its retirement benefits.

Jilma Meneses, the secretary of Washington's Department of Social and Health Services, explained how her state instituted the first-in-the-nation long-term-care program for residents, funded by an employee payroll tax of 0.58%.

The amount of money accruing to pay for long-term care won't be gigantic, but it's a start. "In 10 years, I will be able to access $36,000," Meneses said. "That amount will go up with inflation."

-Richard Eisenberg

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11-25-23 1424ET

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