The first English life insurance policy was issued in 1583 to William Gybbons, a salter of meat and fish. His beneficiaries had to go to court to get their money because the insurance company insisted the policy was based on the 354-day lunar year—and Gybbons died in the 11-day gap between the end of the lunar year and the end of the 365-day calendar year. 

Graphene may be the strongest known material, but small print might be the strongest non-material substance. The insurance business has become no less rigid since Gybbons took a chance on an early financial innovation. That’s an observation based on some recent personal experience. It was a small thing, but it got me thinking about the least appreciated horseman of Canada’s polycrisis: Demographics. 

I had been waiting to liberate a meagre stash of savings from a previous employer’s pension plan and put it in a Locked-In Retirement Account (LIRA). Recently I learned that, like Gybbons, my calendar differed from that of the underwriter. While my money was locked up at the pension fund, I had turned 50. That meant I was eligible for early retirement, per the fund’s rules; however, that designation meant I was barred from putting the money in a LIRA. My options were to take monthly installments based on 60 per cent of total contributions to the plan, or to wait and collect installments based on the full amount once I turn 65.  

This isn’t a woe-is-me story. I’m pretty sure an aging newspaperman, even in the time of TikTok and PhD-level artificial intelligence, has it better than a 16th-century meat salter. But it is a story that shows the systems we’ve put in place to finance life and death are badly out of step with modern lives. 

Life expectancy at birth in Europe in the late 1700s was around 34 years. Today in Canada, it’s around 82. A new report by CPP Investments Insights Institute talks about Canada as a “super-aged society,” as we’re on the verge of joining Japan, Italy and Germany in housing populations where one in five citizens is 65 or older. 

The implications of this demographic shift are as profound as the other elements of the polycrisis, the megathreats over which we have little or no individual control: climate change, artificial intelligence and the return of Great Power rivalry. 

But whereas we talk all the time about the climate, AI and U.S. President Donald Trump, we spend almost no time talking about demographic change. Maybe we don’t need to. One of the takeaways from the CPP paper is that Canada is one of the few rich countries that doesn’t have to worry about its public pension system collapsing. That’s positive, but those payments will do well to cover basic expenses. If the conversation stops there, we’re in trouble.  

There might be another way. We could create a system that finances what British economist Andrew Scott calls an “evergreen life,” rather than one that consists of a few clearly demarcated phases, including mandatory or semi-mandatory retirement at an arbitrary age. Instead of a burden, longevity could be turned into a dividend, but only if a greater number of individuals are fit enough to work well into their 70s, and financially literate enough to maximize their savings. 

The conversations around aging tend to echo Thomas Malthus, who convinced many in the 1800s that the world would eventually run out of food for its growing population. A lower fertility rate has tipped the balance between older and younger people, and medical science is better at keeping us alive. In that context, a larger population of older people is a burden on government treasuries and an anchor on economic growth. 

Malthus failed to see that innovation would more than keep pace with population growth. Crises are about choices, not fate. A longevity dividend has become possible because of longer health spans. Statistics Canada estimates that most of us will enjoy good health until we’re 69.7 years old, a year longer than at the start of the millennium. The participation rate of workers 70 and older is now around eight per cent, compared with around three per cent in the early 2000s. Maybe economic circumstances are forcing people to work longer. Or maybe they are working longer because they blew through 65 with lots of energy and felt they had more to give. 

Regardless, our health spans quite likely will continue to lengthen, and the participation rate for older workers almost certainly will continue to grow. Statistics Canada’s estimate is based on data collected between 2015 and 2017. That predates the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid epidemic was on its way to killing more than 50,000 people in Canada over the past decade. But it also predates Peter Attia’s bestseller Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity; the phenomenal success of Andrew Huberman’s podcast about science and human health; and the willingness of wealthy individuals such as Anthony Lacavara to spend large sums on experimental technology and treatments that promise to extend their lives. 

Life is still hard and full of dangers, but scientific progress gives us a better chance of enduring those rigours than we’ve ever had. The next challenge will be ensuring we all have enough money to enjoy those longer health spans.

The solutions are many and complex. The best ones will de-emphasize arbitrary ages and instead help people insure for what promise to be long and multi-faceted lives. That could mean financial products that provide insurance against job loss caused by some of those other megathreats. 

It could also mean improving financial literacy so households can maximize their savings. I’ve just been reminded that one is important.  

Kevin Carmichael is The Logic’s economics columnist and editor-at-large. He has spent more than two decades covering economics, business and finance for outlets including Bloomberg News, The Globe and Mail and the Financial Post, where he also served as editor-in-chief.