With centenarians set to quadruple by 2056, Davos 2026 speakers debate strategies for retirement reform and long-term fiscal sustainability.
At Davos 2026, leaders from pensions, investing, HR, and the UN tackled the fiscal and human implications of longer lives as “centenarians set to quadruple by 2056.” Moderator David Rubenstein framed the core mismatch: Social Security’s retirement age was set when “life expectancy was 65,” but today many can expect decades in retirement. Pension CEO Annette Mosman argued the response is structural: shifting from defined benefit to defined contribution, pushing transparent communication, reskilling, and aligning retirement ages with mortality—while recognizing job differences. Economist Alexandra Roulet, drawing on France’s contested shift from 62 to 64, warned that “trying to put a single rule to a lot of diverse cases” breeds perceptions of unfairness. Mercer’s Pat Tomlinson emphasized health systems strain: longer lives raise demand, “decreases access” and “increases cost for everyone,” making prevention and workforce design central. GLP-1 drugs emerged as a promising but misaligned investment: employers may pay now while benefits accrue later. UNFPA’s Diene Keita urged a life-course approach and reframing older adults as contributors, not dependents. Across perspectives, “purpose” and continued work—often flexibly—were seen as longevity multipliers. The closing takeaway: plan like a “strategic review” for a longer “last phase,” and start saving earlier despite techno-optimism that “AI” will eliminate the need.
She's waving at you. Ready? Hello, I'm David Rubenstein. I want to welcome everybody to our discussion on longevity. Longevity is an interesting subject, one I did a number of TV shows on recently, and as I dug into it, I realized that humans, when we came out of caves roughly 400,000 years ago as Homo sapiens, had a life expectancy then of 2020, in 1900, in the United States, the life expectancy in 1900 was 49. In 1934, when we passed the Social Security Act, which said you could retire at 65, the life expectancy was 65. So you retire and you die at the same time. Now, in the United States, if you are born today and a good zip code, good ethnicity and a whole variety of good factors in your favor, you have a reasonable life expectancy, probably in the mid 80s in my generation. I was born in 1949. My generation is probably in the mid to late 70s. In terms of life expectancy, the thing that has changed our life expectancy and longevity is that now people realize that they can affect their longevity, they can do certain things to make themselves live longer. And interestingly, people want to live longer. As a general rule of thumb. Now you might say, if you're religious and you think you're going to go to heaven, why are you so interested in living longer? Because heaven presumably is better than being on earth. But no, even religious people want to live longer. So heaven might be nice, but living longer is better. So what we're going to do today is talk about how you can live longer, and why you should want to live longer. And a final point I would make is that the best way to live long is to have good genes. There are other ways we can talk about it, but I interviewed Henry Kissinger not too long before he died. He was about 97 at the time. And I said, Henry, you're way overweight. You never exercised a day in your life. You eat wienerschnitzel for breakfast every morning. How did you get to be 98? And he said my parents had great genes. They lived to their late 90s. So if you have great genes, you can eat whatever you want. Don't exercise, smoke, drink whatever you want. But if you don't have good genes, probably you should listen to what we're going to talk about. Okay. So, Catherine, why don't we start with you? I know you wanted to be last.
That was the only thing I requested was to be last. So we're all.
Catherine is a young global leader, former young global leader, but still a young global leader. And she is the CEO, president and chief executive officer of, of a company that I have a very interest in. I should disclose TC as a company that's a money management company, used to be called Trust Company. The West, now TCW, based in Los Angeles. And my firm, Carlyle is an investor in it. And I've known the company for a while and she's done a terrific job. So why are you interested in longevity and how did you get on this panel?
Okay, so I am going to answer that first, and then I want to say something about young global leaders. We're interested in longevity because we're broadly in the business of helping people save for retirement. And so when we model out what that wealth accumulation looks like, the longevity forecast I think we're going to talk about on this panel, are extremely important to us, thinking about what are the return targets, what are the risk targets that we help people so that they can as their as their lifespan increases, hopefully their healthspan increases. And we're focused on the part that's wealth span. So that's why we care about longevity. I wanted to just say something else about longevity, maybe more of a of democracy. Which is I wanted to say that I was a young global leader, and I had the incredible opportunity to go to Davos early in my career ten years ago. And to attend a module at Harvard, which really changed my life in a lot of ways. It gave me a great global network that helped me professionally and personally. And the reason I got to do that is that was completely funded by David, and that was before I knew him. And it has nothing to do with our relationship by TC. It's because he founded an iconic, I think everyone knows private equity company and used his influence and wealth from that to do a lot of amazing things in the world. And that program that he started. Those people are still here in Davos now, leading different organizations, and it just gave me a global community that I think has helped me be a better American. And I want to thank you for doing that and for that opportunity.
Let me ask you, you recently moved from New York to Los Angeles, uprooted your four young children. And then there were fires in Los Angeles. And did you worry about their safety and your safety and your house burned down, right.
That's right.
So did you think about longevity at that point or you thought about other things?
I thought about returning to New York. Right. But yeah. So I'll, I will tie that to longevity and I'll make an actual retirement comment. So I achieve the goals I'm sure people have in this room to actually learn about longevity. But yeah, that was a that was a hard experience. And we did think about that. And also we're going to come on to this, but we thought a lot about insurance during that time, which everybody did, in LA. And we spent a lot of time talking about that at the Weaf too. We were very fortunate. We were actually renting our house when we lost it, but we lost all of our possessions, as did 7000 other people in Los Angeles. And when it is relevant to longevity and it's relevant to Healthspan because people spent their life savings in America, a lot of people's savings are in their house, which they, generally. That's true. Probably. Right. Okay. And we are, because in caps put on insurance, in America, many of those people that lost their homes actually lost everything. And even if they were, in theory, wealthy on paper, a lot of their wealth was destroyed because private insurance companies were basically forced to to drop coverage for a variety of reasons. We don't have to get on in this panel. And so it's been very devastating. But we are recovered, and I want to end just by saying, are you moving on or should I say something about retirement? You want to get back to you? Okay, good. All right. I talked a lot.
You get to speak again.
All right.
Annette Mossman, you are the group chief executive of APG Group, which is the national pension fund. More or less, in the Netherlands. Yeah. And, do pension funds want people to live longer or they prefer that they not live longer?
We we prefer still prefer that they live longer. Okay. Because that's an intellectual challenge. Because, I'm on the financing side of this longevity challenge. And I really do think what we need to do that's the intellectual challenge, is that we need to revisit the pension fund systems. Luckily, I'm in a country where we did, so we don't have a pay as you go system. We have a pension system which is already 100 years old. And 100 years ago we said that teacher who gets retired at 65, currently at 67, maybe we should give him a pension for 2 or 3 years as long as they live. So that's your story. And now we have to give them a pension for 20 more years. What we did in thinking about it, the first next step we take now is going from a DB to a DC system. So no more guarantees. So, all our participants get more and more risk. That means that we also have to give more and more, communicate more and more and more transparently about reskilling at a certain certain age, get a second career, but also, helping the government to keep that pension age at 67, because the push back is there and maybe to align with mortality rates, to increase it even more. And then we can help during a phase when you're in your 50s, for example, when you have more tough jobs like policemen or, or in the building industry to do a rescheduling and reskilling program. So to enable so on one side, the financing part and on the other side to enable people to keep working until that pension age.
Now, it was in the 20th century that the concept of retirement really arose in the 15th century, the 16th century people didn't think about retirement. They just worked until they died. Do people live longer? Because when they retire, they relax, they play shuffleboard, whatever they do or do. People live longer? If they keep working until they die.
Now we have a professor. Maybe she can, but from my personal point of view is and that's also underlined by, by, research, which is done by the is that purpose is a very important and mental health is a very important driver also in longevity. So I do believe that working maybe not five days a week, but on another pace and gives purpose and will help you to live longer.
Okay.
All right. Diane. Kida. Right. Who is the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund. Can you tell people who are not that well informed about the United Nations what the United Nations Population Fund is?
Thank you so much for this opportunity. The United Nations Population Fund is, part of what we call funds and program. We are supposed to disappear one day and we take care of, population data around the world. And we are the custodian of what we call censuses around the world, just to make sure that we have the right data. And as well, while doing that, we take care of everything that are the big, big indicator, macro indicator of alleviating poverty, maternal mortality, education. So we are very big in as well in every country for how to increase, how to plan family planning to meet all the unmet need for family planning when needed. So while we do that, we realize that we take care of the life. It's a life course approach from the moment the woman is pregnant up to the natality, when the baby is born, after it belongs to Unicef, that, you know, they take care. And then at the adolescent age again, we take it back until the old age. So what we do, and that's why I'm in this panel, probably is the healthy aging. How does healthy aging contribute to the world today? And it's not only a Western concept anymore or even an eastern one. If you take Japan, South Korea, it's really everywhere. So healthy aging, how they can contribute and how as well, to redistribute the pensions, how the pension system is being analyzed in country and the retiring age as well should be done gradually. So really what we do is use population data and advise countries at in their policy, in their socioeconomic development, how they can better plan their aging part of the society, if I may say it this way.
So the UN Population Fund wants there to be more people or fewer people?
Well, the UN Population Fund, we are a scientific organization. We work with the data we have and discuss with the government what they want for their people, what we in the southern part is poverty. If the reason people are dying is because you don't know, you don't have a good school system, you don't have good health system. We say, maybe that's not the way for people to die. Maybe they should be living differently. If you are France or you are Japan, you ask, look, our population is aging. How can we work differently to incentivize the youngers or something? We work with you towards that goal as well.
Okay, so I just ask you one more question. So if you were born in, let's say, a very poor country in, let's say Africa, and you don't have a history of longevity in your family, and you pick up and you move to some place in Japan where people live to be 100 years old very often. Are you likely to live to be 100 years old? If you came from poverty stricken area? Your parents didn't live a long time. But can you move to a place where you have longevity and get better health care and actually live a lot longer? Or is it just too hard to do that?
That's an excellent question, because I think that's where culture comes in and jumps in, because if you go to Japan an excellent and you don't have all the principal cultural of the ikigai, all their purpose in living, etc., etc., you may not catch up in the way they are living simply because there are other things that they live longer. They are a system, that that makes them live longer. Same thing. You come from Africa to the United to the United States. It will be the same thing. You need to adapt culturally to make sure that what you're living at home, you can adapt to the new system you're finding, ahead of you.
Okay. All right, so, Pat Tomlinson is the president and chief executive officer of Mercer, which is, owned by Marsh McLennan, which now is called Marsh. Right. New name. Marsh, new name. Okay, so I won't ask you why you shortened the name.
From.
Marsh McLennan to Marsh or. But what is your interest in longevity and why are you on this panel?
So longevity for us, as the largest HR consulting firm in the world, really hits the three big things that we talk about with clients, right? So clients for us are either public entities. So governments, society, employers, significant portion employers. And then eventually, the nexus of those two things, which is the people, right? Either the population or the employees, and we focus in on their health, their wealth, their retirement savings and how to go ahead and build that for a long life. And then what they do during their work work span and longevity is the key topic that impacts all three. Specifically, I know we'll talk a lot about wealth here, but one of the things I'll highlight probably in my answer is around health. Right? So most people, they recognize that as people go ahead and live longer, people who live longer tend to, have more health challenges and more health concerns and the impact of that on the world in terms of really impacting the access to health care, not only for the older population as they consume more health care, but honestly for all of us. Right. So as people are living longer, the health systems have not expanded enough to respond to the increased demand for health care. And what does that do? It. It decreases access, which lowers quality of care because you can get to your provider less quickly. It also increases cost for everyone because it's tying up all the supply. So things like that kind of hit the the Nexus for us.
Now Marsh is an insurance broker. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. So why does an insurance broker care whether people live longer or not? Just adjust the pricing and you just take care of it that way? Why do.
You care? One of the things we do is insurance brokerage. But Marsh is a broad professional services firm focused in on management consulting through our Oliver Wyman business, on HR and investment consulting, through our Mercer business, and on brokerage, through insurance, through our Guy Carpenter and our Marsh businesses all operating under Marsh going forward. So for us, it's really important if we think about risk, right? Insurance is really about risk. There's a lot of risk tied up in people for employers. And so how do we help them manage their corporate risk through their human capital strategies, making sure they have the right people in the right place, the right time, healthy, motivated, ready to go ahead and do work, lean in, go the extra mile.
Life insurance companies, are they better off financially if people live longer? Or if people don't live so long?
I probably don't have enough expertise to be able to answer that.
Depending on the product, what depending on the product.
Price is okay if.
They've had longevity risk. Okay.
Alexandra Roulette, you are an associate professor of economics at Insead, so you must be studying longevity.
So I'm indeed a labor economist, but I'm also on this panel because I work, as as economic advisor for President Macron. When we did a pension reform in France two years ago, it was a very unpopular reform, by which we kind of postpone the legal retirement age from 62 gradually to 64. It will only be 64 in 2030. Currently, it's being undone precisely because it's unpopular, and there are kind of parliamentary debates around that. And so I think that's also why I'm on that panel because of that experience.
So in France, they always seem to be having protests when people are told they have to work an extra year or so. And why is that? So people don't like work?
A couple questions, I mean, so, I think, you know, going back to the question you asked Annette about whether we are better off kind of living and working or not. I think the problem and the difficulty also with this pension reform is that it's going to depend on your occupation. For most of us, you know, we are probably better off working the most we can because that's part of our social identity and that's what we will do. But you were taking the example of the police officer, who most likely is better off not working until 75. And the problem is you're designing a policy that has a lot of exceptions, because even the 64 only applies to 60% of people. But still, this kind of trying to fit, you know, trying to put a single rule to a lot of diverse cases and people, as you mentioned, based on Jean, are going to have different life expectancy. The policy framework is not accounting for any of this and cannot. Right. And so there's a lot of resistance because, you know, the the system seems unfair to a lot of people and it's kind of almost impossible to build a perfectly fair system.
Let me ask you, our government's better off if people live longer, because in the latter stage of people's lives, they're often in hospitals and they get a lot of health care needs and so forth. Or are governments financially better off leaving the moral issues aside if people don't live quite that long?
So I was showing the data to Pat just before we started the session in France. If you look at all public spending, right, a fourth, a fourth of that, all public spending is retirement pensions. If you add healthcare to that, you're basically at half half of total public spending and including everything. So this is just to show how the burden of this. So from that perspective you would say, okay, governments would be better off if people don't live that long. But that's not quite the right way to look at it. I think what what really matters is the ratio of working age, like the number of people who work over the number of retirees. So, okay, longevity, like people live longer if they can live healthy, that's a good thing. But what you need is to have a lot of people who work and that you can achieve through, like, you know, there's at least four levers, you know, two of which are demographics. So higher natality fertility, immigration would be like demographic ways to kind of counter this longevity force. And then you have like holding demographic fixed. You can increase labor force participation. So increasing the retirement age would be one and female labor force participation. If you look at it over the past decade that has been the big driving force. And we are seeing right now kind of a plateau or even a backlash against that. And I think, you know, as long as you manage to have enough people working, contributing, paying, that's fine.
Now, for a while, there was a view that drinking red wine, maybe two glasses a day, would enable you to live a little longer. Is that your view as an expert and as a French person?
As a French person, I can only recommend having a glass of French red wine every day. But I'm not a doctor. I'm. I have a PhD in economics, not in medical science.
So there are a lot of great titles in the world. I think one of the best titles is somebody I've known for a while, Supreme Allied Commander. That's a great title if you don't have a great title because Supreme Allied Commander, but another great title is Young Global Leader, because everybody likes the word young. Everybody likes to global and leader. Yes. So when you transition from being a young global leader to a middle. aged middle.
Actually a term for it.
How do you as an expert in being a young global leader, how do you live longer? I mean, what are you doing to live longer? I mean, you're presumably like most people, what are you you exercising a lot? You're drinking a lot of red wine.
Definitely. That.
Taking care of kids. That keeps you living longer, presumably. Yeah. So what do you what is your prescription for how to live longer?
So we I do have the glass of red wine. So thank you to your country for that production. And you need it because, you know, demand globally is very down on that. Right. Because people are focusing more on health. But no, I am obviously focused on work, which keeps me engaged. Relationships with my family and friends are at the top of my priority list. I sleep very deliberately, seven hours a night. At least. I'm very focused on that. I kind of organize my life around that, makes me make better decisions, and I do exercise regularly. I wanted to say something about purpose, and we talked a lot about, the fact that, it can give people purpose to work longer and there are certain jobs where they can keep having risks. And I hear that there's a lot of jobs which which you had mentioned, where I think people can take purpose from working longer. I wanted to say as an employer, we employ a few octogenarians. At TC, one is our chair who, you know, Marc Stern. Yes. And the other is a woman named Penny Foley, who founded our emerging market debt team. And she's 80 years old. And I just let her retire this year. And I wanted to say from my perspective, it's been so helpful to have them at TC as a leader. So I think people who stay in the workforce longer can add so much value. And specifically, you know, Mark has seen so many different iterations of this company in the industry, and he gives me a very good objective advice. That's our chair. And I talked to him multiple times a week for advice and guidance on emerging markets debt. Penny at 80 has seen every cycle. And so it is so helpful actually in investing to have people that have been through all of these cycles have been there from the beginning of the asset class. And her perspective actually adds tremendous value in the form of returns to our products. So I hope they feel purpose from working, but they're actually adding a lot to the organization, and I hope we can find more ways for people to stay involved longer, because I think they can. People can add a lot of value later in life.
Okay. Annette, what is your prescription for living a long life and what do you do to live a long life? You want to be a role model for all your pensioners. What do you do to be to live long life? What are you doing?
It's probably the same story like here, but I do really. I did a lot in the physical stuff. And now, all the regiment's getting worse. So now the mental thing. So for me, work is energy. And intellectual concepts like longevity. I think that that gives me energy and, maybe another side of the longevity, from a electoral point of view. We discussed the financing side, but it's also interesting to think about the longevity economy. How do we create GDP growth? Where are the biggest economies in Europe? In the US, are getting more and more people above 60.
So I think exercise is a good thing about one of my friends said that he gets most of his exercise, being a pallbearer at the funerals of his friends and exercise a lot. I guess most people don't agree with that. Exercise is a good thing, right? It is. Okay. All right. Okay. I think about exercising a lot. And, do you exercise? I think about it a lot.
Okay.
I'm still thinking about it today. Diane, what do you do to live a long life? Or presumably you want to live a long life, and, What are you doing? Are you exercising a lot? You're eating healthy. You're drinking red wine. What do you do?
Okay, that's a very good question. I'm going to be very honest as well. I think we are in Switzerland, and I love chocolate. So I spend my good part of my time eating chocolate sugar. So I'm not just, you know, little chubby because I am. And here I have lost £25 where I'm sitting here because I realized when my son, my millennial son, got, a son with his, Gen Z wife, I couldn't carry my grandson. I realized I, I didn't have the strength. So I went back to the gym four times a week, iron body fit. And this very year, I start yoga because I needed some for the mental health part. I needed something to find myself in. And I realized we move office in New York. We had a big, huge office. I said, look, this is too expensive for us. Let's go. Small but efficient. Believe me, all my team, because we are smaller, closer. I think we have a better sense in, you know, and it's impacting the longevity. We have coaches now to make sure that we feel good on our workspace, because at the end of the day, we spend almost, you know, 65% of our time there, and we take care of 66,000 people around the world. And some of those people, they can die every day as we speak in here. They can die every day. So, Jim, a little bit of red wine and Zinfandel is very good as well. The Bordeaux's are excellent. The Zinfandel is not bad. And and having good friends, you know, people you can talk to.
Well, on the subject that you've just mentioned. Oh, there's a word called obesity in the United States. This is maybe hard to believe, but more than 50% of the people in the United States are overweight, and about a third are technically obese. And that's because we have all these processed foods people don't exercise enough and so forth. And experts would tell you that one of the best ways to die early is to be way overweight. You don't see a lot of overweight octogenarians. Why is that? Well, they don't live that long if you're very overweight. So, Pat, what are you doing to live a long life? Healthy life? You are exercising, drinking red wine. What are you doing?
Yes, yes. Listen, I spend we spend a lot of time at work. Right? So I think the part, the thing you really have to do is you get. I think we've talked about purpose a bit and keeping your yourself sharp. And so kind of for me, it's being all in on everything I do. So if I'm going to go spend time with my family on a weekend or go do something like that, I'm all in there when I'm at work from however early in the morning, that is, to however late at night that ends, you're all in 100%. I probably don't get enough sleep. It probably doesn't help me as much. But you know, over years I was in the Army for a bunch of years. I kind of got used to that, so I can kind of live with that, but certainly fitness. But I think it's all about kind of being 100 wherever you are, being present and going all in on what that is, and you kind of keep going.
Now, something has come along recently that has enabled people to lose weight, but now the studies are saying that maybe it'll enable you to live longer. These are GLP one drugs. So are you familiar with GLP one drugs in terms of whether they your people that you insure or provide insurance to or can get those drugs and is GLP now GOP one drugs, the ones that insurance companies encourage people to take?
Well, I won't say so. Let's talk about what they are for a second. Right. So as the the largest health and benefits consultant in the US, we work with a lot of employers on specifically this in GLP and GLP one is a is a a new component to the pharmacy programs that are that are being used. About 5% of all commercial insured people. So let's think about that as employer sponsored plans. I don't know about Medicare and Medicaid plans in the United States are on GLP one. So they've become very, very they've become very popular, as they've as they've gone ahead and moved up. And certainly I think people are starting to see certain weight loss components that come from them to the point you made. We expect to see that there is health benefits out of out of weighing less for significantly overweight people. But so that's kind of where we see GLP ones right now. Employers really considering and thinking about, the long term benefit of GLP ones for their employees. They want to look out for their long term health. But at the same time, many of those benefits are years and years ahead, and they might not be employed by by them any longer. So it's really one of those investments they're making for the future. It's probably not even an investment for themselves right now. It's an investment for the long term, for the economy, for the person and for the next employer who that person might work for.
Okay, Alexandra, you don't look like you're that focused on longevity in terms of worrying about things 50 years down the road. You're very young looking. I'm not supposed to ask a woman her age, but I assume you're you're younger than I am for sure. Okay, so, but why do French people eat foie gras? Is that healthy for you? It's good. Is that going to make you live a long life?
I, I think, you know, like there's two components of longevity. One is physical health and one is mental health. Right. And I think both are important. So I, you know, like good eating in terms of foie gras or red wine, you know, it contributes to like a happy way of living and enjoying life. And I think that contributes to your mental health. That goes with all the social relationship that was mentioned. So it might not be so good for your physical health, but as long as you're kind of, you know, a lot of people who eat foie gras are not overweight and they are not like eating foie gras all day long, you know, like they're, you know, just enjoying a good meal once in a while, which I think, which I think as long as you have moderation, you can enjoy very good food.
Okay. So, Catherine, today, how do you encourage your employees to be healthy so that they can live a long life? Do you have a program you say to your employees, we don't want overweight and young dying and people dying young at our at our firm. What do you encourage your people to do? If anything.
We I actually think the health getting working with benefits firms is something I wasn't. I worked at Goldman for 20 years. I've been a CEO only for a couple of years. So that was new for me to have to work with consultants and improve benefits. And so that's something I've really been focused on, for our employees health and also for longevity. I would say that GLP one are very hard right now. You would have much more data than me, but to get approved, to be covered by insurers. So maybe I should work with you after the panel to do that, because I think that the research is showing it obviously controls weight. It should have a payoff because you're less likely to get diabetes. You should become a lower cost of insured employee over the long term. And now we know it has very strong anti-inflammatory benefits, which I think we think might combat Alzheimer's, too. As you age. There's data on that, so I'd love to get that more covered. But if you ask, how do we keep our employees? Well, we're trying to get the best benefits and it is harder for us. So you're providing a great service to people to help them push their insurers to provide better benefits of health coverage. We actually give credits to people, for working out for fitness. If they do that, we will. Yeah. To encourage them, because we know that there's a corollary to that and lowering the cost of health care, which of course, I think people in the US know is extraordinarily high relative to the rest of the world. And it is a problem as a private employer. It goes up 8%. You have the data on that 8%.
Last year was nine and a half.
That's that's a big number for us as employers to have to carry. And we don't want to put that onto our employees. So, we're trying to encourage them to be healthier. So the part that's self-insured goes down. And creating space for mental health too, which is you've talked a lot about, I think is a big issue. And it makes people more productive at work giving flexibility. And obviously, as a woman who has four kids, when I came in, I put in a lot more benefits for women around fertility, for parents around leave when they have young children, which contributes to mental health. And I think longevity with us as an employee. So we focus a lot on it. And I think it's incredibly important to keep making those investments in the workforce and productivity.
Well, you raised the subject we haven't talked about yet, which is that as people get older in my age group, they worry less about their body falling apart, but their mind falling apart. And dementia is a big concern of a lot of people as they hit their 70s, 80s and so forth. And Alzheimer's is just one type of dementia. But let's talk about do you worry about this for your pensioners? Is that a big subject in the Netherlands, dementia or Alzheimer's, or is that just an American obsession?
It's not that big a obsession, I think in Netherlands. And no, no, that's not an aspect we are looking at from our, from our point of view as a, as a pension company, nor as a, as an employer. So, it is more in the health sector. More and more funds are dedicated towards research, of dementia. But not as a pension fund provider.
Now, there's no easy way to know if you have dementia. Everybody's worried about it if you get older. But one sign people told me or doctor told me was, if you're carrying around your keys in your hand and you're looking for your keys, you can't find them. That's not dementia. If you open the refrigerator and the keys are in the refrigerator, then you probably have dementia. So, anyway, how many people here carry around their keys and are looking for their keys? Sometimes when they're in their hand, in their pocket, you know, okay, so the UN population Fund, are you worried about old age or you're worried about people just getting out of their their youth?
No, we're not absolutely not worried about old age. We are worried about how to use them best for their own communities. And I think that's very, very important. And what we are worried about as well is the menopause link and the mental health, because what we have in our workforce, the young women, growing up a young man and, and the older ones. So menopause is a great part to age nicely. There are so many things that we are not aware of, you know, for in the workplace. So we work a lot on that.
Now, why do you think women live longer than men? Did God love women more than he loves men? Or why do you think women, on average live a couple years longer than men than anybody? Do you have a view on that?
Well, I would say that they probably because they are more resilient and their capacity of doing 100 things at the same time and one time, or just like Mike said, men like to focus do and get out of it on the women. Tak tak tak, you want to rule the world and assemble in a single day time? Maybe that's.
Okay.
But we're not scientific. But I think we're catching up with taking over the lifestyle of the man. And we're catching up. So it's getting closer.
It's getting.
Closer, closer, getting.
Closer and closer.
That's true. Okay. And in the Netherlands, the average person at time of death is to be, what, in their late 70s or something?
No. Beginning 80s.
Early 80s.
Okay.
And so Pat, is Alzheimer's something that your company's focus on Alzheimer's, dementia and the problems that people get as they get older in terms of their brains.
So I'd like to bring it just to mental health in general in the workforce. Right. So what we do, we are doing a lot of work with employers. And as governments have thought about this, about one of the primary ways to keep yourself mentally sharp is to continue to work. Additionally, the topic here around longevity and aging population, and I think you hit it earlier, was also the fact that we have a lower birth rate, which means there's less workforce. And this support ratio is really going to become a challenge. So we are seeing a lot of employers think about, just to get access to talent. How do I get more creative of keeping more seniors or experts in the workforce a little bit longer? Now, a lot of our work ends up being in the United States in some places. I think we've talked about people wanting to retire as soon as they can at 62 in certain countries. But in the United States, for example, a recent survey, we did our Global Talent Trends survey, 80% of all, all, all people that were over the age of 50 said they wanted to work past their retirement age. Part of it, I think, is that the fact that they want to continue to work for they'll need money, right? There's a retirement component and wealth, but a lot of it is this component of purpose and people recognizing the need to keep their mind sharp. So I think it's a it's a common I think people are this has gotten out there that people recognize that they need to have purpose in what they're doing. They need to continue to use their minds. Additionally, the financial and the social component of work that we've all tied ourselves to will keep people working longer.
Now, maybe add to that you were talking about Gen Z, but also the millennials. I think one more aspect we are working as an employer is a different approach to work life balance. Absolutely. So keep them. Keep them involved and keep them with you. So so that is more what we learned post-Covid. We could work more from home. So that's also an aspect which we should think of, for for this generation.
Are any of you familiar with the phenomenon where people retire and they drop dead relatively quickly thereafter? I don't know what the technical name for that is, but it seems as if the body is energized to work hard. You got to keep going, and all of a sudden the body is told they can relax. And the body then has more things that go bad happen to it. What is that phenomenon? Is that prevalent everywhere in the world?
At least as the UN we have noticed, there are very clear statistics on that, that most of people, they contribute to their pension for 25 years and then they get out of the job, they drop dead literally, you know, within the year to come, probably because of the stress of the work, the kind of work we do. I spent 25 years of my life not in beautiful Manhattan, but in places you have never seen, not even on TV. You see what I mean? So probably that's the stress or that and the drinking. The drinking. At some point I think, people, some drink because of the stress. Again, actually we have statistics on that, which is true. And they lose all their pension. And during Covid it was a disaster. It was just a disaster. It was just a disaster. Only one point I would like to make. It's about the contributor. What Mike said. I think we should stop thinking that all the aging people are dependent, need their pension fund, and thinking that all the young people are contributors as well. Because of the millennial, because of the Gen Z, society has shifted a little bit. We have some data. Be careful. A lot of, aging people, they have a little bit of resources. That is enough for them to have a decent life and take care, help for their grandchildren. And a lot of young people. They are not contributors. They just want to be, you know, that well, life balance that they need to be. Thank you. Yeah.
So let me ask you about this. And throughout humanity, it seems as if when people have children, they want to make sure their children live a long life and people are generally prepared to say, look, forget me, I'm the parent. I want my children to live a long life. Why is it that humans don't say, I want to live a long life? Children are separate people. Let them worry about themselves. Have you? Is that a phenomenon that is true everywhere in the world? People want their children to live longer and they're willing to die earlier if their children can live longer.
I think so, I think culturally it's well, well positioned there. But I think even in other society we have some data that are not mismatching the, the normality of the thing. My mom died a few months back at 82 years old. She was absolutely not sick. She slept in the plane and, my father in law at 99 years old, and those are living in Africa almost all the all their lives. And seeing my son, for me as an African woman saying my son living longer than me, that would be a blessing. You see what I mean? It's cultural more than anything else, but it's just, urban legend, if I may put it this way, because everyone wants to live longer.
Now we have prejudice in the world. It's been around from the beginning. Prejudice against women, prejudice against people of color, prejudice against people because of their sexual preference. Do we have a prejudice against old people? And is there a prejudice in the world against old people? I'll define that as being, let's say, over the age of, I don't know, 70, 75. There's a prejudice or there's no prejudice. Do you see that?
So actually in France, we have the opposite debate is in the sense do we have a prejudice against young people. So the reason we say that is because, a lot of the policies are actually, for instance, if you think about retirement policies, asking the currently young to work longer in order to fund the benefit, you know, the pensions of the current retiree. And I think that, you know, like, as you said, a lot of, you know, wealth is being concentrated among people who are actually older, and it's becoming harder for young people to afford housing and make a living just with their work. So we have and the thing is that, I don't know if that's true in other countries, but at least in France, old people, they all vote young people. A lot of them don't go to vote. So politicians, they tend to cater to what please retirees because that's and also they're kind of, you know, bigger part of the population as, as time goes. So we are having actually the opposite debate about whether our policy or not too biased to favor the currently retiree or more senior people at the expense of the younger generation. And then if you add to that, the discussions around public debt and climate, you know, that just reinforces the point.
Many people on this panel would like to live to be 101. No, two.
Yeah.
No. You're not sure.
If you have good health span? Sure.
How many would like to live to be 90 not you're okay of 90. No difference between 90 and 100 okay. All right. So, look, we've had a good conversation. Let me just ask you each one last question. Do you think people should spend more time focusing on longevity, or should they just focus on other things? Is longevity a subject that now people should spend more time thinking about? Or should we worry about other things?
I think people should spend more time thinking about it. And one PSA I wanted to get out there briefly. Elon Musk, I don't know if he was on a podcast recently talking about AI and how it's going. We're going to live in a world of excess abundance. So he said there's no longer a need to save for retirement money. And that actually went viral. So he said, in 10 to 20 years, don't don't bother saving for retirement to any young people because AI is going to change the world and we're going to live in this excess abundance. So you no longer have to worry about saving money.
Well, if you're if you're worth $500 billion.
Probably.
Probably don't spend that.
But I just I just want like that's an extreme view.
On retirement. I think you do have to think about longevity. That's his view. I just want to say we don't agree with that as people have professionally helped people save for retirement. I'm sad that went viral because to your point about young people, actually, I think it's very important. And we've started to do this in America, to actually start the savings much earlier. Compounding is an incredible force for wealth creation, and we actually have to push the savings earlier and earlier. The US is focused on that. Kazakhstan just put in a program on that where they're doing it when the child is born. And so I would argue the opposite extreme of that, that we do have to start that earlier, and we have to be much more focused on that around the world, because in the you have the stats that the UN says, I believe by 2080, we're going to have more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 18. So this scheme that we have in place, where young people start later to support the older people, it will not actually demographically work. So I think as an individual you need to save earlier, but as a collective system, we have to find a way to start the compounding process earlier.
Yep. Okay. So the message that you would like to give to people about longevity, let's suppose you got half a billion people watching right now. And whatever you say, everybody around the world is going to be listening to. What is the brief message you would like to give to people on longevity?
I think think about it, but look at it like a company once in a time. Do the strategic review. How do you want to live in this last phase of your life, which will be longer than you think? Probably. And how will you finance it? So. So give it time, but the rest of the time, live in it now and and enjoy.
Just about out of time. And I think we had a good conversation. I would just say, if you want to live a long life other than having good genes, get a lot of sleep every night, seven eight hours is pretty good. Eat healthy foods. Don't drink excessive alcohol even if it's red wine. Don't take illegal drugs, which probably not going to be healthy for you. I have a relationship, a relationships that are meaningful for you and have a purpose in life, and those are the things that generally people would say enable people to live a longer life, which is, I think, the goal of most people on the face of the earth. So we're out of time. I want to thank our panelists for interesting conversation. How many people here want to live to be 100? Okay. How many want to make it to 90? How many of you are going to make it to 50? All right. Thank you all very much.
Appreciate it.