The silver lining of an ageing population

First the good news. We’re all living longer. In fact, if you’re reasonably healthy, the chances are that when you go to bed tonight your life expectancy will be five hours greater than it was the same time yesterday. What’s more, it’s now predicted that most of the babies born today in the developed world willive to be 100. Whoever’s on the throne in 2109 will be getting through plenty of stamps.

On a purely selfish level, science’s ability to defer the inevitable is a deeply comforting trend. Most of us would like to live for as long as possible. But the flip side is pretty obvious.

A rapid growth in the number of people living into their late eighties, and a corresponding decrease in the number of younger people presents society with a big problem: more people who can’t look after themselves and fewer people to generate the wealth to look after them.