Sunday, January 09, 2011

Over ten million people to live to 100

Who the hell knows if this will happen but the great and the good of the DWP (UK Government Department) reckon that more than ten million people in the UK today can expect to live to see their 100th birthday – 17% of the population. Three million are currently aged under 16, 5.5 million are aged between 16 and 50, and 1.3 million are aged between 51 and 65. Around 875,000 are already aged over 65.

In 2066, there will be at least half a million people aged 100 or over.

This gives me some ideas about writing a new book 80-Plus Marketing. What this research doesn’t talk about is how the healthy life expectancy age is likely to change. If that remains where it is then we are going to have a lot of people spending the last two decades of their lives with poor health. Not something to look forward to.

The other thing that the research didn't mention is where all of these oldies will be living. The UK has massive differences in life expectancy related to social class.  We could have an ancient prosperous South and relative young poor North. Dick Stroud

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