The Invisible Wealth of Aging Well: The Longevity Dividend
SIf we succeed in turning the years gained into a full life, longevity can become one of the greatest assets of the 21st century.
The longevity dividend is, in essence, a form of invisible wealth: that which is generated when the years added are lived with health, autonomy, and meaning. It is not just about living longer, but about living better for longer. That is the true value.
At the beginning of the 20th century, life expectancy barely reached 50 years in many countries. In Spain, it did not even reach 35. Today, thanks to advances in medicine, nutrition, hygiene, and living conditions, it far exceeds 80. In 2024, the national average is around 84 years: 86.34 for women and 81.11 for men.
But this historic achievement contains a paradox: we have added years to the calendar, but not necessarily life to those years. The question is no longer just how long we live, but how we live.
More Health, Less Burden
Faced with this paradox, an optimistic outlook emerges: turning longevity into a real dividend. This is not an inspiring metaphor, but a tangible proposal: if we manage to extend not only life, but also health over more years, we can generate economic, social, and personal benefits with transformative power for the 21st century.
The idea is simple in its formulation but ambitious in its implications. If we manage to delay biological aging—that is, if more people reach advanced ages in good physical and cognitive condition—not only will we reduce the costs derived from chronic diseases. We will also free up resources, increase productivity, and strengthen collective well-being.
Instead of imagining longevity as a burden, we could embrace it as a structural opportunity. A society in which living longer also means living better, with more autonomy, more participation, and more vitality.
A Transformative Scientific Strategy
This approach represents a profound shift in the way we address aging. For decades, public policies focused on fighting specific diseases—cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s—as if they were isolated battles. But current research in the biology of aging proposes something different: to act on the biological processes that lie at the common root of many of these diseases.
The goal is no longer to cure them one by one, but to slow down the systemic deterioration that triggers them. If we manage to intervene in these shared mechanisms, we could simultaneously reduce much of the ailments that deteriorate quality of life in old age.
Advances in this field are increasingly promising. Genes and cellular processes involved in aging have been identified; compounds that prolong healthy lifespan in animals are being tested; and interventions are being explored that, in the future, could translate into a preventive medicine of human aging.
This is not about pursuing immortality, but about expanding the stretch of life that is worth living: the one in which we remain autonomous, creative, active, and fulfilled.
Justice, Equity, and Political Will
The scientific promise of a longer and healthier life will not fulfill itself. It needs to be accompanied by a political and ethical strategy that rises to the challenge. The longevity dividend is not distributed automatically: it requires sustained investment in research, public policies focused on prevention, more humane and sustainable care systems, and a cultural transformation that deactivates the prejudices about old age and combats ageism.
One of the most urgent challenges is equity. Today, longevity is already unequal: the life expectancy of those with lower incomes is significantly lower than that of those with more resources. If the interventions that allow aging well are only accessible to a few, we risk consolidating a new form of structural inequality: a society divided between privileged long-livers and shorter, more precarious lives.
That is why speaking of longevity is not only speaking of science, or health, or demography. It is speaking of justice. And of the collective will to build a more equitable future.
Redrawing the Social Contract
It will also be necessary to rethink labor structures, social protection systems, and inherited notions about the course of life. If people live longer and better, does it make sense to retire at 65? What shall we do with the “additional” years? How will we organize lifelong learning, flexible work, shared care, volunteering, and social participation?
The longevity dividend does not depend only on biology; it depends on how we redesign our social contract. But that redesign must not focus only on older people: it must involve all generations.
Longevity transforms life rhythms. It reorders the cycles of education, work, rest, and care. If we are going to live longer, why concentrate all the effort in the first decades and not extend learning as a driver of change that promotes personal fulfillment along the entire journey?
We need an intergenerational perspective that allows us to build more sustainable, less linear, more supportive lives. Redrawing the social contract also means imagining a more just and shared vital time, where well-being is not condensed into one stage, but distributed throughout the course of life.
A New Perspective on Old Age
Beyond policies, we need a new cultural narrative about old age. A view that breaks with inherited stereotypes, that moves away from the automatic association between aging and deterioration, dependency, or passivity.
Old age is as plural and complex as any other stage of life. There are people who, at 80, write, love, create, travel, care, commit, reinvent themselves. If society does not give them space, presence, and voice, we are missing out on a deep and invisible wealth.
Seizing the longevity dividend does not only mean adding years in good health. It also means recognizing the symbolic, relational, and human value of older people: their memory, their experience, their capacity for connection, their contribution to the collective meaning. It is not enough to extend life; we must dignify it in all its forms.
So What Now?
Ultimately, living longer should not be a cause for alarm, but an unprecedented collective opportunity. But that opportunity will not take shape on its own: it demands preparation, determination, and a vision for the future. We must invest, think, imagine, and act. Because if we do it right, longevity can be one of the great positive revolutions of the 21st century: a qualitative leap in the history of human life.
And if we do it wrong, it will become an escalating source of inequality, suffering, and institutional collapse.
There is still time. The longevity dividend is not a utopia or an empty promise. It is a real possibility. But it will only be so if we know how to place the fruits of science, ethics, and political will at the service of all—and not just a few.
The future is not written. It is yet to be decided. And it does not depend solely on governments, experts, or institutions. It is up to us—as a society—to imagine it, build it, and share it. Because the longevity dividend is not inherited: it must be earned.
And if you knew you were going to live for 100 years... what would you do differently from today?