FOR MOST OF history humans lived only long enough to ensure the survival of the species. Today babies born in the West can expect to see their grandchildren have children. With more time come many more opportunities for work and pleasure, enriching individuals, societies and economies alike. Whether mankind is able to reap this “longevity dividend” will depend on how those opportunities are used.

在历史上有很长一段时间里，人们生存的意义只是为了繁衍生息。现在西方国家的人甚至能够活到自己的孙子都生了孩子的那个岁数。活的岁数增长了，他们就有更多的时间去工作和享受生活的乐趣，更多的时间去丰富自我，去造福经济社会。人们能否从这份“长寿红利”中获益取决于人们怎样利用这些机会。

By the early 2000s the state of health of American men aged 69, as reported by themselves, was as good as that of 60-year-olds in the 1970s; 70 really does seem to be the new 60. This report has argued that if employers, businesses and financial services adapt to make far more of such people, big economic benefits for everyone could follow. There are striking parallels between the longevity dividend now in prospect and the gender dividend that became available when many more women started to enter the labour market in the 1970s. The last stage of life could also be greatly improved by letting more people retain their autonomy, often with the help of technology.

据美国官方数据显示，二十一世纪初69岁男性的平均健康状况与二十世纪七十年代60岁男性的健康状况相当。这样一来，70岁的人看着也像60岁的人。这项报告还指出，如果雇主、商务和财务服务，提出更多针对这一人群的服务，将会为每个人带来巨大的经济利益。不管是现在还是未来，“长寿红利”与“性别红利”都有着惊人的相似的地方，二十世纪七十年代更多女性进入劳动力市场，使性别红利成为可能。在科学技术的帮助下，让更多的人拥有主动权，可以让我们的生活更上一个台阶。

But for all those benefits to be realised, two things need to happen. First, employers must adapt to an ageing workforce. Although the gig economy and self-employment have been helpful in allowing older people to carry on working, the fact that they are so widely used suggests that traditional employers are often insufficiently flexible to accommodate this new group.

但要实现上述的福利，需要做到两点。首先，雇主要适应老龄劳动力，尽管众创经济和个体经济在一定程度为年老人继续工作提供了帮助，综合大量的事实证明，传统的雇主对于接受这一新群体通常并不买账。

The business case

商业案例

Ageist recruitment practices and corporate cultures can be big impediments to keeping older workers employed. Nearly two-thirds of this group surveyed in America said they had witnessed or experienced age discrimination at work, according to the AARP, a lobby group for the over-50s. Legislation can help, but the best hope is for employers to recognise that offering opportunities to older workers is smart business rather than a social duty. Academics have found that older people in multi-generation teams tend to boost the productivity of those around them, and such mixed teams perform better than single-generation ones. Companies that have taken this advice to heart, such as Deutsche Bank, report fewer mistakes and positive feedback between young and old.

针对大龄职员的招聘惯例和企业文化，经常把大龄员工留在企业视为最大的阻碍。根据美国退休人员协会的调查，在由五十岁以上的员工组成的老龄集团中，有三分之二的人在工作中目睹或者遭遇了年龄歧视。虽然有关机构能够提供帮助，但最好的办法是让雇主意识到雇佣大龄的员工是明智之举而不是一种社会责任。已有研究发现，大龄员工在由不同年龄员工组成的团队中，可以提高周边人的工作效率。而且这种混合年龄段的团队要比单一年龄段的团队表现的更好。有些公司确实很好的领会了这一理念，比如德意志银行，公司员工在工作中出错少了，并在年轻和年长员工间得到了更加积极的反馈。

As one of the world’s oldest countries, Germany offers other encouraging examples. “It used to hurt in all the usual spots,” says Andreas Schupan, grabbing his back, elbows and shoulders. Aged 47, he has worked on a production line at BMW, a carmaker, for over 20 years. Now a computerised cart does most of the lifting for him, and he hopes to stay on for another 20 years.

作为世界上历史最悠久的国家之一，德国还有其它一些鼓舞人心的例子。来自宝马汽车生产线的工人安德烈亚斯·舒班说：“我以前不是这疼就是那疼”，他一边说一边摸了摸自己的后背，手肘和肩膀。今年47岁的他，已经从事汽车制造行业20多年了，现在一部电脑操控的台车可以帮他完成大部分的抬举工作，他希望自己再多干二十几年。

The second thing that needs to happen is for the benefits of longer, healthier lives to be spread much more equitably. As things stand, greater longevity is something of a lottery that favours the well-off and the well-educated. Not only do people in the rich world live significantly longer than those in poor countries, but huge differences in lifespan persist even among rich-country dwellers. In America the difference in mortality rates among those with and without a college degree has been widening for the past 20 years.

第二点需要完成的是，长寿健康的生活需要更加平等的实现方式。在目前的情况下，长寿就像是偏爱那些受过良好教育，家庭富裕的人的乐透奖。不仅表现在那些富裕国家的人比贫穷国家的人更加长寿，单单在富裕国家间居民的寿命也有很大差距。过去20年间，有大学学历和没有大学学历的人群死亡率的差距已经越拉越大。

Across the OECD, the average highly educated 25-year-old man can expect to live eight years longer than a contemporary with only a basic education (see chart). In Britain a baby girl born between 2012 and 2014 in Richmond, a wealthy area in south-west London, is not only likely to live 3.4 years longer than her equivalent in Tower Hamlets, a run-down part of east London; she will also enjoy 14.5 more years in good health, estimates Britain’s Office for National Statistics.

这些经济合作与发展组织成员国的数据显示，25岁受过高等教育的男性要比只受过基础教育的同龄男性平均多活八年（见表中数据）。英国2012-2014年的数据显示，出生在里士满富人区（位于伦敦西南部）的女婴，要比破败的伦敦陶尔哈姆莱茨区的同龄人平均多活3.4年。据英国国家统计局的数据估计，她还会相比之下多享受14.5年的健康生活。

The causes of such gaps in life chances between haves and have-nots are well known. Smoking, obesity, air pollution, drugs and alcohol consumption all have a strong, and in some cases growing, influence on differences in life expectancy within countries, says Fabrice Murtin of the OECD. The best way to level the playing field is to invest in public health, offer universal access to health care and provide high-quality education for everyone. Unsurprisingly, in countries such as Canada or Sweden, which attach great importance to such matters, the gap in life expectancy between the most and the least educated people is much narrower than it is in America.

来自经合组织的法布里斯·穆尔丁说：“贫富差距是众所周知的。吸烟、肥胖、空气污染、毒品和饮酒已在不同国家内或多或少的引起了不同人群寿命的差距。”在这一领域找到平衡的最好的办法就是投资公共医疗，让每个人都有机会接受公共医疗和高质量教育。加拿大、瑞典等国家对这一问题十分重视，这一点也不奇怪。这样一来，在这些国家的高学历人群和低学历人群间的差距就没那么大了，至少比美国的要小。

Individuals will also have to take more responsibility for unlocking their own longevity dividend. In a survey of Americans conducted by researchers at Stanford University, 77% of respondents said they wanted to live to 100, but only 42% claimed to be making a real effort to get there.

人们要想从长寿中获益需要就要付出更多的努力。斯坦福大学进行的一项有关美国人口的调查显示，77%的参与者说他们想活到100岁，但只有42%的人愿意付出努力来实现这一目标。

Given the right input from governments, employers and individuals, it should be possible to stretch the increasingly productive in-betweener stage and compress the dependent period at the very end of life. But that last stage will always remain costly, and the state will probably continue to pick up most of the tab.

如果政府、企业和员工都做出了适当的努力，就能提高生产效率，并压缩在生命最后的依赖期。但是，最后一个阶段的花费将十分高昂，而这一阶段政府可能会继续承担主要花费。

Estimates of life expectancy over recent decades have regularly proved too conservative. Some demographers already think that children born in the rich world today will routinely make it to 100. With vast sums being pumped into fields such as stem-cell research, regenerative medicine, biomedical technology and genomics, human lives could stretch well beyond that. If that happened rapidly, it could prove highly disruptive. Economies would suffer, social tensions could erupt and progress on gender equality might be reversed as many more women were obliged to become caregivers for the elderly. To avoid such ill effects, societies and economies must start in earnest to prepare for those longer lives right now.

最近几十年的数据对于寿命的估计还是有些保守了。已经有人口统计学家认为富裕家庭出生的孩子通常是能活到100岁的。大量的资金投入了干细胞、再生药物、生物科技和基因学的研究领域。人们的生活可以在这些研究的基础上变得更好。但如果这些科技发展的太迅速，又会造成巨大的破坏。经济会不堪重负，社会压力会爆发出来。性别平等的进程也会被逆转。因为更多的女性被迫转成了看护和照顾长者的角色。为了避免这样负面影响的出现，国家需在社会和经济方面立即开始做好准备迎接老龄人口。

编译： 陆雯昕

审校：刘迪

编辑：刘秀红

英文来源：经济学人