Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger Showcase a Bright, Gray Future
The world of work needs to adjust to our increased longevity. The grizzled rock stars point the way forward.
Still singing for his supper.
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In the past 200 years, average life expectancy has increased at a pace of more than two years per decade. The immutable statistics of demographics mean the dependency ratio — retirees as a percentage of people of employment age — will at least double in the coming decades. The solution to that looming financial crisis, of too few workers supporting too many pensioners, is to draw from the examples of Paul McCartney, who is 80, and Mick Jagger, his junior by two years, and acknowledge that working lives can be extended well past the current prevailing deadlines, argues Adrian Wooldridge.