Laura Carstensen could hardly curb her enthusiasm as she talked about a future with an abundance of centenarians.

“Life is getting longer,” said Carstensen, the co-founder of the Stanford Center on Longevity, as she delivered her keynote message to a packed room at the 5th Annual Invest In Women conference in Atlanta. The three-day event, which attracted nearly 500 attendees, is being sponsored by Financial Advisor magazine.

“Most of you will sail through your 80s and 90s, and lots of you will live to reach 100,” Carstensen said, basing her conclusion on the assumed background, education levels and affluence in the world. She didn’t stop there.

“And your children …”

Demographers predict that children born since 2000 will live to 100, and children born in 2007 will live to be 104.

“And we are not going to have to wait for them,” said Carstensen, whose speech was titled “A Long, Bright Future.” Increasingly in the developed world, she said, more and more people are living to be 100 and older.

Carstensen showed a slide of a birthday cake with a candle in the shape of a “100.” She said her aunt, who died at 102, was really “pissed off” that they had birthday cards for 100 but they didn’t go to 101, 102, 103.

“I think this would be a great opportunity for a new business—greeting cards.”

It might be less happy for policy makers and thought leaders. Most of our policies were put in place for very different assumptions about the age of our populations, she said.

And it happened fast, “in the blink of an eye,” she said. Carstensen pointed out that life expectancy 5,000 years ago was 18. In the 1900s, life expectancy reached 47, and it reached 77 at the end of the century. Today, it’s 79 and it continues to increase, she said.

“We humans are creatures of culture, and all of these parts of culture evolved to support lives half as long as we live today,” she said. “The built world we live in is a world that was designed for the young.”

From Pyramid To Rectangle

She showed a pyramid in the shape of a triangle, which she said represented population. The bottom represented many young people and the winnowing at the peak depicted the small number of survivors, she said, explaining that 25 percent of babies died before 1900, and many more before the age of 12. She added that death in these times was common at all ages and not associated with old age.

Out of concern, our ancestors collectively began to invest in building a world so that babies would have longer lives. “They discover causes of diseases and how they were spread, and they put in place inoculations, community-wide vaccinations, so that diseases would not spread,” she said.

They didn’t stop there. They also began to pasteurize milk, purify water and use agricultural technology that provided a steady food supply. And they put public education in place so all children could learn to read and write.

“Today, education is a better predictor of life and age. That’s a stunning observation,” Carstensen said, explaining that the population triangle has now reshaped into a rectangle.

“It changes the family and the entire population,” she said. “Here we are where four and five generations routinely will be living at the same time. Education will change, financial planning will change, the nature of work will change. All of these things will change because of these numbers. Completely novel.”

Carstensen pointed out that fertility fell by half at the same time we gained 30 years, and that’s why we have an aging society, she said. A hundred years ago, only 4 percent of the U.S. population was over 65. Now that number will rise to 20 percent in a couple of years. And this is a global trend. For example, in Japan, 27 percent of the population is over 65 and by 2050 that figure is estimated to reach 36 to 41 percent depending on fertility, she said.

By 2035, there will be more people over 65 in the U.S. than people under 18, she added.

For men, 68 is the new 59: Men reached the point of 2 percent mortality risk at age 59 in 1970 and that’s up to age 68 today, Carstensen said. For women, 73 is the new 65. Women hit that 2 percent mortality risk at 65 in 1970 and it’s at 73 today.

Carstensen offers four key things that people need to do:

• Envision longer lives, envision old age and use your imagination: The goal is to stay out of nursing homes, she said;
• Design your life: Forget about willpower. Design things so your choices are healthy choices. For example, she said you should plan and prepare what you are going to have for dinner instead of getting something on the fly, which most likely will be unhealthy;
• Diversify: When we had 50 years of life expectancy, we didn’t have too much to diversify, she said. Take, for example, a three- to four-day workweek that allows us to distribute our time and spend more with friends and family.
• Invest in yourself: People are going to find ways to go back to school and take micro-courses. She suggests that we also invest in family, our children and other peoples’ children.

“Next time you drive by a school ground,” she said, “just squint an eye about, and what you will see are the first centenarians of the century. They are here.”