Living to 95 may impact the world as much as -2-

Scott: This is a really new moment for humanity. We're always focused on technology as defining generations. What's really going to be different is that grandparents are going to be hanging around a lot longer than previously, and there's going to be a whole lot more of them. In places like China, you have one child, two parents and four grandparents. That's a whole different demographic structure. So I think these are profound changes in human history. And it's not going to change overnight. Things will change, but they will change slowly.

In the United States in the last 10 years, two-thirds of the employment growth has come from people aged over 50. For all the talk of ageism, something is happening. You have two older presidential candidates. There's a lot of debate about that, but in some ways that debate is healthy. Because in the end, it's made it not so much an issue. I don't think it's really a sign of ageism. I think it's a sign of changing attitudes and changing debate.

The big change that's happening, particularly in America, is that we've gone from having lots of younger people and very few old to having somewhat age equality. That's why we've got to get better at the intergenerational stuff. The good news is a lot of adjustment is happening - we just don't notice it. A lot more older people are working, but we just don't notice it. Older people are a bit younger in their attitudes, so we may not notice it as much.

If people work for longer when they're older, it doesn't create unemployment amongst the young, but it does change the career structure. We need to change the institutions so we don't have people at the top blocking those who are coming through.

That's where age-friendly jobs come in. They're more flexible. There's more autonomy. Everybody likes those types of jobs. But older people like them a lot. So they're willing to take a wage cut for that. I think that's going to be the way we support intergenerational diversity and intergenerational flexibility.

-Jessica Hall

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04-23-24 1242ET

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