Life expectancy in Britain has been increasing at a rate of five hours every day and threatens to outpace pensions reform, an expert said yesterday. In the light of the evidence of the past two centuries, Prof Tom Kirkwood, the director of the Institute for Ageing and Health at the University of Newcastle, said people were living for around two years longer each decade.
Previous forecasts of life expectancy had predicted that the rapid increase seen in recent decades would begin to level off steeply, and bump up against a ceiling, but the ageing process seems much more malleable than this.
Speaking at the National Association of Pension Funds annual conference in London yesterday, Prof Kirkwood said people did not know what the future held in terms of life expectancy and politicians and society needed to take closer note of the latest research.
"Biological research over the last 20 years has shown us that actually there is no strict biological programme for ageing and no set upper limit for the length of human life," Prof Kirkwood said. "It is about time people woke up to this."
He thought that average life expectancy would certainly rise to 90 or more, then slow, but "strongly discounted" the claims by a few scientists in the ageing field that advances could lead to people living for up to 200 years.
Prof Kirkwood said "smart options" were needed for the transition from full-time work to full-time retirement, and there also needed to be a "profound change in attitudes".
"At the moment we have an extraordinarily ageist society," he said. "It is about time we recognised that people are living longer and longer.”
