The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity

By Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott – Bloomsbury, 2016

Today’s 60-year-olds have a better-than-even chance of reaching 90 or more, and the majority of today’s infants will live to at least 105, according to the authors, both professors at the London Business School. But, they argue in this fascinating book, people will need to organize their very long lives quite differently. To support themselves for 100 years, they will have to keep working through their 70s and perhaps even into their 80s. And they’ll need to live multi-stage lives, with transitions between the stages—time to rethink goals, retool skills and possibly change careers altogether. The authors acknowledge that the rich, who already live longer than the poor, are also more likely to have the education and the financial and personal resources to adapt to a multi-stage life, but overall this is an optimistic take on the future, offering both personal advice and public policy suggestions.