Have We Been Thinking About Longevity Backwards?

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By Maddy Dychtwald

We’ve been treating longevity as though it begins at 50.

It doesn’t.

The longevity revolution is not a story about being old longer. It is a story about what happens when all of us live longer—and our families, workplaces, financial systems, healthcare institutions, and communities have to change along with us.

Consider what is happening in the United States. We are approaching a historic demographic turning point when older adults will outnumber children. In 1950, adults 65+ represented roughly 8 percent of the population. Today, they account for about 18 percent. And by 2030, every baby boomer will be 65 or older.

We hear numbers like these and immediately picture retirement communities, Medicare, Social Security, nursing homes, and caregiving.

That may be where we get longevity backwards.

Because a country with more older adults isn’t simply a different country for older people.

It’s a different country for everyone.

It changes who works and for how long. Who provides care. Who pays for it. How families organize themselves. How employers think about careers. How we save and spend. And how responsibility moves between generations.

Every 25-year-old today will build a career, a family, and a financial life inside this new longevity economy.

Yet we spend surprisingly little time preparing them for it.

Consider caregiving. Nearly one in four American adults is part of the sandwich generation, simultaneously helping an aging parent while raising or supporting a child. Among adults in their 40s, the squeeze is even greater.

Younger generations can see what is coming. Many members of Gen Z expect that caring for aging parents—financially, physically, or both—will become part of their lives.

And that responsibility may arrive at exactly the moment they are trying to establish their own financial footing: building careers, buying homes, starting families, paying off debt, and saving for futures that could last 90 or 100 years.

But I want to be very clear about something.

Older adults are not the burden.

The burden is an infrastructure that failed to keep pace with longevity.

We added decades to life without redesigning life for the added decades.

Our institutions were largely built around a much shorter lifespan: educate when young, work for several decades, retire around 65, and expect a relatively short period of life afterward.

That model no longer fits.

A 65-year-old today may have another 20 years ahead—and many will have considerably more. Yet our systems for work, education, retirement, healthcare, caregiving, and financial planning still largely reflect the old map.

Then we wonder why families feel stretched.

This may be both the central challenge and the extraordinary opportunity of the longevity revolution.

Instead of asking individuals and families to somehow absorb the consequences of longer lives, we need to begin redesigning the systems around them.

What if education prepared us not simply for our first career, but for several—especially as AI transforms the world of work?

What if employers expected people to move in and out of work, caregiving, learning, and reinvention across much longer working lives?

What if financial planning began at 25 with the possibility of a 100-year life rather than waiting until retirement appeared on the horizon?

What if caregiving were treated as essential economic infrastructure rather than a private family problem?

These aren’t questions just for older adults.

They are questions for all of us.

Because longer lives are not simply a challenge to solve. They are an extraordinary opportunity.

More years can mean more time to learn, earn, contribute, create, care, reinvent, and begin again.

Employers that understand this can attract and retain talent across generations. Financial institutions can help clients plan for much longer lives. Governments can build policies around the population we are becoming rather than the population we used to be.

And individuals who understand longevity early can make decisions at 25, 35, and 45 that profoundly change what is possible at 75, 85, and 95.

The longevity revolution may be one of the greatest opportunities of our time—but only if we stop treating it as just an older adult’s issue.

Longevity belongs in how a 25-year-old plans a career.

How a 40-year-old navigates caregiving.

How a 55-year-old reinvents.

How an employer designs work and benefits.

How a financial advisor plans for a client’s future.

And how a country prepares for the decades ahead.

Maybe the biggest shift we need to make is also the simplest:

Longevity isn’t just about older adults.

It’s about all of us.

And the earlier we understand that, the better prepared we will be to make the most of the longer lives already arriving.

If we started teaching longevity at 25 instead of 50, what would we teach first?

We Measure IQ. We Measure EQ. Are We Missing the Number That Matters Most?

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By Maddy Dychtwald

We have a number for how smart you are. We have a number for how well you read a room. But we don’t have a number for something that may shape the final decades of your life more than either:

How well do you understand—and act on—what keeps you healthy as you age?

I have started calling this Healthspan Intelligence.

And I think it’s time we started paying attention to it.

For the last century, we have been remarkably successful at extending lifespan. We added years to life. But we have been far less successful at adding health to those years. Researchers affiliated with Mayo Clinic recently measured the gap between lifespan and healthspan across 183 countries. Globally, that gap has grown to 9.6 years—a 13 percent increase since 2000. The United States has the widest gap in the world: 12.4 years. More than a decade, on average, spent living with disease or disability rather than full health and vitality.

For women, the story is even more troubling.

Women live longer than men, yet globally their healthspan-lifespan gap is about 2.4 years wider. In the U.S., women now spend an average of 13.7 years in that gap.

Think about that.

We have succeeded at helping women live longer without succeeding nearly enough at helping them live healthier, more vital, longer lives.

That is the longevity challenge of our time.

And it’s why I believe we need a new kind of intelligence.

Healthspan Intelligence

Scientists conservatively estimate that genetics accounts for only about a quarter of the variation in human longevity. Our environments, behaviors, medical care, social circumstances and countless other factors help shape the rest.

Which means the way we age is not simply something that happens to us. We participate in it.

That is where Healthspan Intelligence comes in.

It’s not how much health information you know. Most of us already know we should exercise, eat well and get enough sleep. It’s whether you know which actions matter most for you—and whether you turn that knowledge into behavior.

Because information without action isn’t intelligence. It’s trivia.

We’ve already seen how quickly health behavior can change when knowledge, tools and motivation align.

Consider GLP-1 medications. In May 2024, about one in eight American adults reported having tried one. By late 2025, that had risen to nearly one in five.

Whatever your view of these medications, the larger lesson fascinates me:

Health behavior isn’t fixed.

Entire populations can change surprisingly quickly when science, motivation and accessible tools converge.

Now consider something far less futuristic: muscle.

Muscle mass begins declining surprisingly early and the losses accelerate later in life. Yet many of us don’t pay much attention because the bathroom scale can’t tell us what we’re losing.

But strength may tell us far more about how well we are aging.

A recent study of more than 5,400 women ages 63 to 99 found that those with the strongest grip had a 33 percent lower adjusted risk of death than those with the weakest grip.

Not the thinnest women.

The strongest ones.

That is Healthspan Intelligence in action: knowing that maintaining strength isn’t about looking fit. It’s an investment in your future independence, resilience and longevity.

And here is the part I feel most strongly about.

Healthspan Intelligence is not another lecture about willpower.

If American women are spending nearly 14 years living with disease or disability, we cannot simply tell them to try harder.

We need better research on women’s bodies and brains. Better prevention. Better health education. Better tools. Better environments. And healthcare systems designed not merely to treat disease, but to help people preserve health for as long as possible.

Healthspan Intelligence is both personal and societal.

Individuals need it. Doctors need to teach it. Employers need to support it. Schools should introduce it. And policymakers should understand it.

Because perhaps the most important measure of a longevity society isn’t simply how long its people live.

It’s how they live better longer.

We added the years.

Now comes the harder—and more exciting—work: adding health, strength, purpose and vitality to those years.

Your IQ may have helped you through school.

Your EQ may shape your relationships.

Your Healthspan Intelligence may help determine how you experience the final 20 or 30 years of your life.

So perhaps it’s time we started measuring it.

If you could raise your Healthspan Intelligence in just one area this year—strength, sleep, nutrition, connection, purpose, prevention—where would you start?

 

Sources 

  • Healthspan-lifespan gap of 9.6 years globally, 12.4 years in the US, 2.4 years wider for women, and nearly 14 years for US women: Garmany A and Terzic A, Global Healthspan-Lifespan Gaps Among 183 WHO Member States, JAMA Network Open, 2024 (Mayo Clinic). 
  • Women as 80 percent of centenarians, roughly 14 years in poor health, and up to 90 percent of healthspan within our control: Maddy Dychtwald, Ageless Aging (Age Wave). 
  • About 25 percent of lifespan attributable to genes and roughly 75 percent to environment and lifestyle: Danish twin studies (McGue et al.; Herskind et al.), the widely accepted consensus estimate. 
  • GLP-1 use rising from about 12 percent of adults in May 2024 to about 18 percent, and higher among women: KFF Health Tracking Polls (2024 and 2025). 
  • Muscle loss of about 6 percent per decade after midlife, and strongest women showing a 33 percent lower mortality risk: sarcopenia research reviews and a 2026 grip-strength and mortality study reported by Medical News Today.