Life once followed a familiar pattern. You’d go to school, get a job, build a family, and then, sometime in your 60s, retire, enjoying life for a few years until you grew too frail to live on your own. Then you might move in with family or check into a facility where you’d spend your “golden years.”
A crucial part of that blueprint was an unsaid but universal assumption: that for the vast majority of people, life would not extend far beyond their 70s. That was based on the average lifespan when this still dominant picture of an American life arc was first formed, and it underpinned everything—from how people planned their careers to the way companies designed their pension plans. Yet now it looks like a relic.
Read the full article: The New Old Age | TIME
Full issue: The Age of Longevity | TIME
