May I congratulate the Times of Malta on its introduction of the Senior Times to its pages. I was delighted to receive the edition on the day in November that I celebrated my 84th birthday.
The newspaper recognises in the nicest way that the Maltese are living longer and more actively. Many discussions on an ageing society focus inevitably on the rising number of people aged 65 and over and point to the increased costs to health and social care and expenditure on state pensions.
In 2018 (the latest figures available to me), almost 90,000 of Malta’s population was aged 65 or over. About 30,000 people were aged between 65 and 69 years, 40,000 were between 70 and 79, 17,000 were 80 to 89 years old and almost 3,000 were over 90. Average life expectancy in Malta is about 83 years, with females living to almost 85 and men to just over 80.
The threshold for “old age” has traditionally been set at 65 years. For decades it was the official retirement age for men and remains the point at which many occupational pensions begin. However, improvements in life expectancy mean that 65 is looking increasingly out of date.
Because of rising longevity and better healthcare, diet and lifestyles, people aged 70 today have the characteristics and health similar to people aged 65 only 20 years ago. The starting point for old age has important implications for public policy. There may be a case to say that, for the purpose of defining “old age”, 70 years should become the new 65.
The number of people who are aged 65 has grown and is predicted to rise even more steeply in the years ahead with the proportion of the population aged 75 years and over increasing.
By no longer considering people as “old” once they reach 65, this age group could instead be regarded as contributing to society for longer through retiring later and also, importantly, through the opportunity to do voluntary work, or look after grandchildren or other family members (as still happens so impressively in Malta).
Andrew Scott, co-author of the best-selling book, The 100 Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, believes that a new way of quantifying should be introduced. Instead of “years lived” (say 65 years lived), it may be more realistic and fruitful to look at life expectancy and operate on the basis of “15 years of life left” as the threshold of old age. Under this system, the start of old age in Malta would move to 70 for women and stay at 65 for men.
We should switch the focus from “mortality” (the age we die) to “morbidity” (the age when bits of our bodies start to fall apart). If we can expand the time when we are useful citizens, and reduce or compress the period when we require expensive hospital admissions and state funds, an “ageing population” will not be so economically onerous.
The upward trajectory of longevity – with a couple of years being added to the human lifespan in advanced economies broadly every decade – is a testament to progress. The average lifespan grew more in the 20th century than in all previous millennia. In 2020, it is forecast there will be more people on earth over the age of 65 than under the age of five.
What the young can’t grasp is that most older people don’t feel so different from their youthful selves
Yet old age is rarely treated that way by policymakers. The best plot lines in the lottery of life are seen as childhood, young love and the child-bearing years. After that, the drama thins and mainly concerns loss: loss of mobility, loss of friends, livelihood, partner, hair (mine is thinning fast).
What Scott, an economist, and his co-author, a psychologist, propose is a radical re-evaluation from the three present stages of life: education, work and retirement. Instead, with our greater expanse of time, young people will have a longer period before they settle down. Education will be a life-long process as, over decades, we constantly need to retrain and update skills.
Retirement will not happen abruptly, but will have a long tail. We will need to earn for longer and develop the self-discipline to save more. This will be the multi-phased living of the future. It is already happening.
Many people want to work part-time after official retirement to avoid boredom, maintain connections, enhance pensions and to have a good reason to leave the house. Yet, a high proportion of us – about half – retire having made no plans to scale down one’s work activities or commitments. Instead, they just experience one day the shock of ending work for good.
I must confess that my inclination when asked “how old is old?” has always been to define it as being “10 years older than I am at any one time”. I am extremely conscious, however, that, at 84, I’m probably running out of time. The secret is activity.
I have worked non-stop for the last 67 years and never missed a day’s work through sickness. I have enjoyed two most fulfilling careers: 20 years in the British Army and 23 years as a senior civil servant in the UK Ministry of Defence.
For the last 24 years since my retirement, I have been privileged to enjoy a wonderful range of work as advisor to two prime ministers and several ministers of both parties. Perhaps most rewardingly, I have been involved in a host of voluntary roles to this day, quite apart from being a columnist on this newspaper for the past few years.
When I think of the bleak alternative to old age, I consider myself extremely fortunate. What the young can’t grasp is that most older people don’t feel so different from their youthful selves. Although we may appear drab outside, inside we still flame with the wild spark of youth. Long may it continue.
As the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said: “Age does not make us childish, as men tell, it merely finds us children still at heart.”