NEWS COVERAGE

Oldest adults may have much to gain from social technology, according to Stanford research By ALEX SHASHKEVICH NOVEMBER 28, 2016

The oldest of the adults in the U.S. who use the internet, cellphones and other communication technology report feeling less lonely, more satisfied, and more physically fit.

Adults over 80 who use information and communication technology are more likely to report mental and physical well-being, according to Stanford research.

“Critics say that people might not be able to connect with others as well as they used to because of the spread of new technologies,” said Tamara Sims, a research scientist at the Stanford Center on Longevity. “But there really is this bright side of technology, especially for older people, who may not have the opportunity to connect with many family members to the extent they want to due to physical limitations or geographical separation.”

The study specifically found that adults over the age of 80 were likely to report using technology because it helps them connect with friends and family. They also found that those who reported using technology to primarily connect with loved ones reported higher mental well-being. Those who said they used technology mostly to learn new information reported being more physically fit.

Sims was a lead author on the research paper, which was published in the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences. She conducted the study along with Andrew Reed, a former Stanford postdoctoral fellow, and Dawn Carr, an assistant professor of sociology at Florida State University.

Research gap on oldest of the old The population of people age 80 and older is the fastest growing segment in the United States, but there are relatively few scientific studies about them compared to other age groups, said Sims, a former Stanford psychology postdoctoral fellow.

“It’s critical that we focus our attention on this age group because they are a ballooning demographic subgroup, but also because more and more of us are increasingly likely to reach very old age,” Sims said.

Previous studies have shown some association between social media use and better health among older adults, particularly lower levels of depression and loneliness. But most studies on the older population focus on adults over 65 years old, and that research tends to underrepresent people who are more than 80.

Sims argues it’s important to distinguish between the populations who are over 65 and those who are over 80, also referred to as the “oldest-old.”

“These are different life stages, and they come with their own sets of challenges,” Sims said. “At 65, people are typically entering retirement, and are likely still socially engaged. For those over 80, people typically begin to face more and more health problems, which may prevent them from engaging with others as often as they would like. It’s important to look at these populations separately.”

Aside from narrowing their focus to adults over 80, Sims and her team also wanted to distinguish among the reasons why the oldest-old use technology and examine different aspects of their well-being: physical and mental wellness. The study’s analysis was guided by the socio-emotional selectivity theory, which suggests that as people age, they perceive time as more limited and prioritize meaningful interactions with their loved ones over learning new information or meeting new people.

The study and its results As part of the study, researchers surveyed a nationally representative sample of 445 participants, ages between 80 and 93, online and over the phone. The respondents were asked about their motivation for using information and communication technology, the definition of which included cellphones, personal computers, video streaming services and other digital applications. The respondents were also asked how many devices they used and to rate their physical and mental well-being.

When Sims started the research, she didn’t expect to find much of a correlation between technology use and well-being because adults over 80 are considered to be the most unfamiliar with these technologies and are least likely to use them.

“I was going into it a little bit skeptical,” Sims said. “Part of me wondered whether the use of technology would make much of a difference for this population because pervasive stereotypes characterize this age group as technologically inept, in addition to being physically and cognitively frail.”

Contrary to these stereotypes, most of the adults over 80 who were surveyed used at least one technological device regularly, and doing so was related to higher levels of self-reported physical and mental well-being. The effect on mental well-being persisted when researchers statistically controlled for physical well-being, and vice versa.

“This group is viable for intervention,” Sims said. “I don’t think many people are spending time thinking about it. The key here is that if you get them using these technologies, we could probably see some real benefits to quality of life in very old age.”

But Sims emphasized the correlational nature of the study’s results.

“We can’t say that using technology will directly improve the well-being of people over age 80,” Sims said. “But our findings are suggestive of a viable pathway and may help to inform longitudinal interventions.”

Future studies are needed to compare the impact of in-person social interactions and those done through technology among the oldest-old. Specific effects of different types of technology, such as using a cellphone, a social media platform, or video conferencing, would also be interesting to examine, Sims said.

The study was also supported by Brookdale Senior Living. NEWS COVERAGE

6 retirement strategies from a local pro By STEVE VERNON NOVEMBER 2, 2016

What strategies does a retirement expert employ for his personal use? I bet you could learn a thing or two from a professional who has studied retirement all his life and is now in his early 60s, planning for his own retirement years.

That’s me -- I’ve worked as a consulting actuary helping employers and workers with retirement issues for more than 40 years. Along the way, I’ve written five books on retirement planning, been a weekly retirement columnist at CBS MoneyWatch for over seven years and conducted research on retirement topics for the Stanford Center on Longevity for almost four years.

By the way, I’ve never worked for an insurance company or investment institution -- I’ve always worked as a consultant, writer and researcher. So the strategies I share aren’t influenced by how I’ve been paid all my life.

Because I’ve spent a lot of time applying my experience and expertise to planning my own retirement, I thought I’d share here my strategies with our readers.

To set the stage, you should know my wife and I have taken good care of our health, and both of our mothers lived into their early 90s. Taking these factors into account, there’s a high likelihood that at least one of us will live to our mid 90s or even to 100. As a result, we need to plan for the money lasting that long -- at least 35 more years.

Given this time frame, it doesn’t make sense to be fully retired and live on just our financial resources for that many years. Not only would that take a lot of money, but a lot can happen between now and then. As an example, during the past 30 years, the stock market has had four major meltdowns, each one of which could have derailed carefully made retirement plans.

So that leads me to six ways I’m planning for retirement.

1) Do work I enjoy, at least until age 70. When choosing what work I’d like to do, I look for work that I enjoy, helps people and keeps me in contact with people I like. This doesn’t mean working at the same job, at the same pace or earning the same amount of money that I needed when I was paying for my children’s living expenses and education. Now I’m earning just enough to cover my basic living expenses, which are much lower since the kids are off the payroll.

Continuing to work now allows me to optimize my Social Security benefits by delaying them until age 70. Also, I can let my 401(k) and IRA accounts grow until age 70-1/2, when I’m required to start withdrawing my savings due to IRS required minimum distribution (RMD) regulations.

2) Deploy a thoughtful retirement income strategy. To plan ahead, I’m developing sources of guaranteed monthly income for life that my wife and I can spend after I stop working. This income will cover our basic living expenses, such as housing, food, transportation, utilities and insurance. It’s guaranteed to last as long as my wife and I live, and it won’t drop in value when the stock market crashes. The sources of income include Social Security and a monthly pension from my prior employer. These are the “bond” part of my retirement income portfolio, and they give me the confidence to ride out the stock market crashes that will inevitably occur during our retirement years.

I also used an online Social Security planner to determine the best strategy for claiming my Social Security benefits and those for my wife. The best plan for us involves delaying my benefit until age 70, while my wife will start her earned benefit at her age 66.

When I stop working completely, I’ll most likely buy a low-cost fixed monthly annuity to supplement the above sources of guaranteed income.

I’ll keep the rest of my savings invested in my former employer’s 401(k) plan, which offers low-cost index funds. I’ll use a conservative systematic withdrawal strategy to generate cash flow to meet our discretionary living expenses, such as travel, gifts and hobbies. I’ll use the IRS RMDs to determine withdrawals from my 401(k) and IRA accounts.

For any other retirement savings I have, I’ll withdraw the interest and dividend payments. A recent study I co-authored at Stanford provides support for investing these savings substantially in stocks, given that I’ve developed guaranteed sources of retirement income to cover my basic living expenses, which means I can take some risks.

3) Control our living expenses. Given our need to budget living expenses carefully, we buy “just enough” to meet our needs and be happy.

Not long after the kids moved out, we downsized to a townhome. Having a smaller, lower-cost property will enable us to pay off the mortgage early in our retirement years, which will reduce our living expenses substantially. The bonus? The homeowners association takes care of gardening and structural maintenance, expenses we won’t have to worry about.

Our cars are currently eight and 12 years old, and are still going strong, so we won’t be replacing them anytime soon. When we buy things, we’re aware they might need to last for the rest of our lives. We do our research before purchasing, and whenever possible, we wait for sales to make major purchases.

4) Take care of our health. We want to enjoy life as long as we can. Research shows that a healthy diet and exercise are the best ways to maintain our physical and mental health for as long as possible. As a result, we strive to keep our weight at healthy levels, eating lots of fruits, vegetables, grains and beans. To increase our strength, flexibility and cardiovascular systems, we attend yoga classes regularly, hike, bike and swim. Whenever possible, we go ballroom dancing for fun fitness.

5) Protect against catastrophic health conditions.

Until we reach Medicare’s eligibility age of 65, we decided to buy expensive medical insurance from my prior employer. If we didn’t have this option, we’d buy insurance on our state’s exchange. Going without insurance isn’t an option because both my wife and I have incurred unexpected, expensive medical conditions in spite of our health-consciousness. If we didn’t have continuous health insurance coverage, these preexisting conditions would have prevented us from obtaining insurance (thank goodness for the Affordable Care Act).

Once we reach age 65, we’ll enroll in original Medicare and buy Medigap and Part D prescription drug plans that give us flexibility and options when we reach our later years.

We’re very aware of the need to arrange for long-term care in our frail years, having watched our parents incur these expenses as they got older. As a result, we’re holding our home equity in reserve for that potential risk. We won’t take out home equity loans or a reverse mortgage to cover our standard living costs in retirement. If we don’t need all the home equity for these expenses, the house will serve as a legacy for our children. 6) Stay socially engaged. While I’ve been at Stanford, I’ve seen compelling evidence that staying socially engaged is correlated with good health and longevity. It’s difficult, however, for scientists to establish causation mechanisms that prove social engagement will improve our health and longevity. Such evidence would require decades of carefully constructed longitudinal studies that most likely won’t be finished during our lifetimes.

Until then, I’m relying on my intuition and the existing scientific evidence that convinces me to stay connected with my family, friends and my hobbies and interests until my dying days.

But what about the “vacation” aspects of retirement, you might ask. Only a small fraction of my time is spent on activities like travel, hobbies and purely social visits.

Instead, I’m spending much more time working and giving back to my family, community and causes. This gives my wife and me plenty of “doses” of valuable social engagement and makes life fulfilling, enjoyable and worthwhile.

The proper perspective It has taken a lot of work to implement these strategies, but they’ve been well worth the effort, given that we’re planning to make the most of all the time we have left on this earth. I realize that not everybody will want to implement some or all of these strategies, or may not be in the position to adopt some of them. But many other strategies can work well for you.

These strategies won’t guarantee a long, healthy life because life is anything but certain. But they can certainly improve the odds. My hope is that you can find some ideas here that might help you live long and prosper. NEWS COVERAGE

How millennials can help themselves -- and their parents By STEVE VERNON OCTOBER 21, 2016

A recent survey from Fidelity Investments offers a wide-ranging portrait of millennials’ money-related habits. And while some of its results show that many millennials do indeed mooch off mom and dad and often move back home to live with them, it also provides a different spin on those “boomerangs” who return to the nest after initial attempts to fledge fail.

And it belies the stereotypical image of the unemployed millennial who plays video games in their parents’ basement.

That’s the case for the many millennials and their parents who are structuring intentional boomerang arrangements that can provide substantial benefits to both parties.

While not denying that many millennials have financial problems, Fidelity’s Millennial Money Study also reports that a lot of them have found creative ways to deal with their challenges. A number of them have jobs, live with their parents and are using the money they save on rent to pay off student loans, build an emergency reserve, save for a down payment on a house or save for retirement.

Here’s some evidence from the Fidelity study on these positive outcomes, including an informative infographic:

• In 2016, 21 percent of millennials were living with their parents, up from 14 percent in 2014. Two-thirds of Fidelity survey respondents report it’s acceptable for children to live with their parents. • Eighty-five percent of millennials report having some form of savings in 2016, up from 77 percent in 2014. • Fifty-nine percent of millennials report having an emergency savings fund with an average of $9,100 in it, equal to an estimated six-and-a- half months of income on average. • Sixty percent of millennials report saving for retirement, up from 47 percent in 2014.

Fidelity’s Workplace Investing business reports that millennials are contributing an average of 6.8 percent of their pay to 401(k) plans, up from 6.6 percent in 2015. Add matching contributions by employers that average 4 percent of pay, and many millennials may be nearing or meeting target retirement savings guidelines that might be appropriate for them.

The results of Fidelity’s study are consistent with the results from a recent Transamerica study that shows millennials are saving a median 7 percent of their pay toward retirement.

There’s more good news indicating millennials are building long-term retirement savings: Fidelity’s Workplace Investing business reports that almost two-thirds of them invest 100 percent of their retirement savings in target-date funds. These funds typically have high allocations to stocks, which is appropriate given that retirement is decades away for most millennials.

Of course, parents often take satisfaction in helping their adult children become successful in life. But there can be additional benefits. The Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL) recently published its Sightlines report, which measures the steps that Americans of all ages are taking to improve their longevity and well-being. This report documents the importance of social connections.

A little more than half of Americans of all ages report taking the beneficial “social connectedness” actions identified by Sightlines. One particularly disturbing trend, however, is that today’s 55- to 64-year-olds are less likely to report these valuable social connections compared to their predecessors 15 years ago. Simply put, millennial boomerangs can help provide their parents with valuable social connections and support as parents approach and enter their retirement years.

John Sweeney, executive vice president of retirement and investing strategies at Fidelity, makes an intriguing suggestion for millennials and their parents who are structuring intentional boomerang arrangements. He recommends that parents consider a modest, below-market rent for their millennial or ask for help with paying for utilities. This would help millennials become accustomed to the discipline of paying a monthly rent and/or utility bills, which they’ll undoubtedly encounter once they leave home.

In addition, parents have the freedom to put this money to good use, either adding to their retirement savings, or saving it for a future gift to their children for important goals, such as buying a home or starting a family.

Compared to prior generations, millennials have closer and more robust relationships with their parents. It only makes sense that they help each other with the significant challenges they each face at these critical junctures in their lives. NEWS COVERAGE

Do brain-training exercises really work? By JACQUELINE HOWARD OCTOBER 20, 2016

A battle has been brewing over whether brain training really works, leaving consumers stuck in the middle, scratching their heads.

Many experts believe that brain-training programs are a waste of money. They roll their eyes at the idea that using such computerized programs can improve attention, memory or overall intelligence.

Some experts contend that brain training is useful and can improve cognition by harnessing the power of brain plasticity, the idea that our brains can learn new skills and adapt even later in life. They argue that there’s a difference between “brain games” and research-backed “brain training.”

Still other experts say that the brain-training industry is new, evolving and that it might be too soon to dismiss or champion the field.

Research has led to a “pivot point” where scientists can build upon all the lessons that have been learned in the industry, said Dr. Adam Gazzaley, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco and founding director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center.

“A major limitation in what we have seen so far is that in order to change the brain in a meaningful and sustainable way, despite the fact that it’s plastic, you really have to engage it in a very deep way. We need to develop far more immersive therapeutic video games, in addition to doing better studies,” he said.

The latest strike in this battle of brain scientists comes from seven researchers who published a review paper in this month’s edition of the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

The paper claims that there does not appear to be enough evidence to support brain training’s ability to boost cognition -- and that many studies that back brain training have some shortcomings.

“Our review suggests that there is little compelling evidence for real-world benefits of existing brain-training products,” said Daniel Simons, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois and lead author of the paper.

The researchers analyzed more than 132 published and peer-reviewed papers often cited by brain-training companies and proponents as evidence that the practice is effective. They found that all of the published studies fell short of best practices when it comes to conducting scientific research, Simons said.

“Many studies are suggestive of benefits,” the researchers wrote. “Yet most studies have lacked adequate controls for placebo effects, have tested sample sizes that are much too small, and have not fully reported and analyzed all outcome measures.”

The elusive placebo effect A separate study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in July, pointed to placebo effects as a reason for some of the positive findings associated with brain training.

For the small study, researchers at George Mason University created two separate flyers inviting students to participate in their research. One flyer had non-suggestive language, advertising the study as an opportunity for students to earn credits. The other advertised the study as a “brain training and cognitive enhancement” opportunity and mentioned, “numerous studies have shown working memory training can increase fluid intelligence.”

Then, the researchers asked 25 students who responded to the non-suggestive flyer and 25 who responded to the brain-training flyer to participate in the same one-hour session of cognitive training. All of the participants completed a fluid intelligence test before and after the training.

The researchers discovered that the students who responded to the non-suggestive flyer had no improvement in their test scores. However, the students who responded to the suggestive brain-training flyer experienced a five- to 10-point increase on average in their test scores.

“I wasn’t too surprised. After talking with others in the field, it was clear that methodological flaws could be leading to some of the positive outcomes in published work” supporting brain training, said Cyrus Foroughi, a cognitive scientist at the United States Naval Research Laboratory. He led the study as a graduate student at George Mason University.

But neuroscientist Henry Mahncke, the CEO of Posit Science, a brain-training software and services company, said that the small study on placebo effects was designed to produce a biased result -- and that there are several brain-training controlled trials that show a different outcome.

“There’s study after study that are randomized placebo-controlled trials of brain-training, and in those studies, both groups of people have equivalent expectations that they’re going to benefit. So if there is a placebo effect, it washes out across those groups,” Mahncke explained, adding that he thinks the new review paper condemning brain-training research and programs is “silly.”

Many of the scientific studies on brain training that Mahncke called high-quality -- including the largest cognitive-training intervention conducted yet, called ACTIVE, which involves 2,832 participants -- are the same ones picked apart in the new review paper.

“This is just a bunch of old-school psychologists, and what they’ve done is, they have theories from more than 100 years ago that explain why brain-training can’t possibly work,” he said of the new paper. “I’ve just never seen a less even-handed review.”

Simons said he and his colleagues have decided not to publicly respond to Mahncke’s comments.

‘There’s been an absolute revolution’ One thing that Mahncke actually agrees with in the new review: Repeating a specific mental task, such as memorizing a list, does not result in generalized improvements in cognition.

As Simons, lead author of the new review paper, put it, “Different brain training companies propose different mechanisms.”

“Most rely on the idea that training a basic cognitive mechanism using one task will lead not just to improved performance on that task but on all other tasks that rely on the same basic mechanism,” he said. “We did not find compelling evidence that training on one task in one context generalizes to other tasks in other contexts.”

And that’s been showed over and over again in research, Mahncke said.

“So what have I learned about that as a scientist? Well, you probably shouldn’t build training programs focused on practicing memory. Let’s do something smarter than that, and we have done something smarter that,” he said.

“There’s been an absolute revolution, not in psychology but in neuroscience, over the past 30 years. What we’ve learned from this revolution in neuroscience is that the brain is what we call plastic. It’s capable of changing itself, depending on what you do with it,” he said, “and we can build on that idea of brain plasticity to build a new kind of brain-training program.” A Posit Science brain-training program called DriveSharp has been clinically proven to help the visual systems of older drivers to respond faster to hazards in their peripheral vision, Mahncke said. AAA has even partnered with Posit Science to offer the program to its members 55 and older at a discounted rate.

In the program, users complete visual attention tests and multiple object tracking tasks. Their risk of an at-fault crash can decrease by 48%, Mahncke said, citing a figure that was mentioned and questioned in the new review paper.

In the paper, the researchers wrote, “for the typical individual, the benefit works out to roughly one fewer at-fault crash every 62.5 years. ... The difference between at-fault and not-at-fault accidents is likely just noise due to the small number of crashes in this sample -- it is not particularly informative. From a consumer’s perspective, the most relevant statistic is the probability of avoiding all crashes, and that does not vary meaningfully for a typical individual as a function of training. “

Nonetheless, such tested brain-training programs are the difference between brain games and brain training, according to Mahncke.

Brain games vs. brain training “There’s a big line that I would draw, and that line would be between brain games and brain training. So, when we look out at the world, there’s a lot of brain games out there,” Mahncke said. “But what brain training is, is it takes a real systematic understanding of how the human brain works and how it’s capable of change, and it builds exercises that directly target literally the way the brain processes information.”

He added that the Federal Trade Commission has cracked down on brain gaming companies for making false claims about the science backing their programs.

“They went to those that had no science and no clinical data and said, ‘Hey, you can’t make claims about improving brain function if you don’t have the data to back it up.’ And that’s what they did, and you know, that’s a good thing for the field,” he said.

In January, the creator of the brain-gaming company Lumosity agreed to pay $2 million to settle charges from the FTC. The charges alleged that Lumosity deceived consumers with unfounded claims that its games could sharpen thinking in everyday life and protect against cognitive decline.

The developers and marketers behind the LearningRx brain-gaming programs settled similar charges in May, paying $200,000. Both Lumosity and LearningRx are still in business. On its website, Lumosity describes its web and mobile games as “designed by scientists to challenge core cognitive abilities.” The company launched a collaborative research initiative called the Human Cognition Project that involves more than 40 universities.

Meanwhile, LearningRx’s website notes, “We offer a variety of programs that target specific cognitive weaknesses.” The company includes a five-member scientific advisory board and features more than a dozen studies about its programs on its website.

But the controversy surrounding brain training seems to have heated up before the two companies faced their charges, about two years ago, when critics called it “pseudoscience.”

The back-and-forth in brain science A group of 75 scientists and experts from institutions and universities around the world issued a statement in 2014 declaring that scientific evidence does not support claims that “brain games” help older adults boost their mental capabilities.

“We believed many of the claims made by the brain-training industry were misleading and in many cases patently false,” said Laura Carstensen, founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity and a psychology professor at Stanford University who was one of the scientists who signed the 2014 statement.

“Shortly after we issued the statement, the industry organized another statement and gathered signatures from other people who said that there was good evidence. Their statement got little attention from the scientific community ... but it left the public, once again, confused,” she said. Indeed, several months after the first statement was issued, an international group of about 133 scientists and practitioners countered that existing research supports the benefits of brain training.

Now, Mahncke said, “the recent review paper is just one more example of folks who are in the middle of a paradigm shift and don’t realize it.”

However, Gazzaley, the neuroscientist at UCSF, said that he views the paper as a call to action.

“When I read a review like that, I look at it as a call to arms. Here’s the methodological challenges that we face as a field, and now, the task before us is to do this better, both on the technology development side and the scientific validation side. I remain cautiously optimistic about the future of this field,” Gazzaley said.

He said that, in the future, there could be FDA-approved therapeutic video games for patients, and brain training programs in the form of virtual reality, augmented reality and wearables.

“But it will take a lot of high level of evidence to accomplish that. That’s why the paper, to me, is a challenge to do better, and I think that’s fair,” he said.

How to boost brainpower Brain-training supporters believe that certain software and training programs can improve cognition, but how do the experts that question brain training recommend keeping a healthy brain?

“Stay physically and mentally active doing the activities that you enjoy. For example, if you enjoy reading and playing crossword puzzles, do that,” Foroughi said.

Carstensen said that while there are many lifestyle changes -- from healthy eating to frequent exercise -- that someone can do to boost their brain, there is no quick fix.

“There is some evidence that physical exercise improves cognitive performance. Because heart health is related to brain health, diet is also likely involved. And there is considerable correlational evidence that people who are socially and cognitively engaged in stimulating lives, by working, volunteering or other forms of active learning, are in better shape cognitively than those who are not,” she said. “But there is no evidence for magic bullets.” NEWS COVERAGE

Five faculty members elected to National Academy of Medicine OCTOBER 18, 2016

The academy elected Stanford faculty members Laura Carstensen, Christopher Garcia, Mark Krasnow, Mark Musen and Thomas Rando to its membership.

Four professors at the School of Medicine and one at the School of Humanities and Sciences have been elected members of the National Academy of Medicine.

Christopher Garcia, PhD; Mark Krasnow, MD, PhD; Mark Musen, MD, PhD; Thomas Rando, MD, PhD; and Laura Carstensen, PhD, now number among the academy’s 1,947 members and 146 international members.

Garcia is a professor of molecular and cellular biology and of structural biology, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on understanding and manipulating interactions between receptors and ligands, particularly in the fields of immunology, stem cell biology and neurobiology.

Krasnow is a professor of biochemistry, executive director of the Wall Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease and an HHMI investigator. His research examines the development of lung tissue and the role of stem cells, the genetic origin of lung cancer and other lung diseases, and the neural circuits that control breathing and speech.

Musen is a professor of medicine and of biomedical data science and director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research. He is principal investigator for the Stanford Center for Expanded Data Annotation and Retrieval, which aims to make online biomedical data sets more accessible and reusable. His research focuses on intelligent systems, ontology engineering and biomedical decision support. He is a creator of Protégé, an open-source framework for building intelligent systems.

Rando is a professor of neurology and neurological sciences, director of the Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging and deputy director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. At the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, he is chief of the neurology service and director of the Center for Tissue Regeneration, Repair and Restoration. His research focuses on the development of muscle tissue, the molecular control of muscle stem cell differentiation, the functionality of older muscle stem cells and the molecular basis of muscular dystrophy and potential therapies for it.

Carstensen is a professor psychology, the Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. Her research addresses changes in motivation and emotion across adulthood and the ways that these changes influence cognitive processing, decision making and health practices.

Established in 1970, the National Academy of Medicine, formerly called the Institute of Medicine, is recognized as a national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on health issues. The academy’s almost 2,000 active members are selected on the basis of their professional accomplishments and volunteer service. NEWS COVERAGE

Let’s retire retirement By CHIP CASTILLE OCTOBER 12, 2016

At a recent BlackRock Retirement Roundtable, Stanford’s Laura Carstensen, Encore’s Marc Freedman and Brookings’ Josh Gotbaum discussed the different ways that our current concept of “retirement” is outmoded.

Many different retirement-related topics are covered by BlackRock’s Retirement Roundtable series, but at a recent New York roundtable, the very concept of retirement is being challenged. I caught up with Stanford University’s Laura Carstensen, Encore.org’s Marc Freedman and The Brookings Institution’s Josh Gotbaum to discuss how their radical ideas intersect.

Chip: You all had different wrinkles on a core idea: Our current concept of “retirement” doesn’t make sense any more.

Carstensen: It doesn’t. First of all, it’s much too long. I ask people all the time, “If you had 30 extra years in your life, where would you put them?” No one ever says, “I’d make old age longer.” Yet this is precisely what we’ve done. Life expectancy nearly doubled in the 20th century and without giving it a second thought, we collectively tacked on all the added years to the end. Only retirement got longer.

Freedman: “Retirement” is a construct anyway. Every 50 years or so, when the shape and contours of our lives need adjusting, we cook up new chapters. Such was the case with the invention of the “golden years” 50 years ago, when we concocted a vision of retirement as a kind of second adolescence (graying as playing). Fifty years before that we fashioned adolescence itself. At the time, the country was experiencing a proliferation of “neither-nors,” of young people who were neither children nor adults, and considered a potentially destabilizing social force. We resolved this tension through a social invention—a new stage post-childhood.

Chip: People forget, or never knew, that retirement pensions were created as a workforce management tool. They were a way for companies— particularly those involving physically intensive and potentially dangerous labor—to move older people out of the workforce. In an era when life expectancy was under 65, you didn’t want a physically frail 65-year-old working in a rail yard. But with life expectancy much higher and physical and mental health staying strong much later, why can’t a 65-year-old accountant keep working?

Gotbaum: There’s no reason he or she can’t. Except that most of our institutions are geared for people to retire all at once—to stop working entirely at 65, or even earlier. Neither the government nor the private sector have caught up with demographic reality.

Chip: But won’t people say: “Hey, I worked hard for this all my life for this chance to finally relax and now you’re telling me I have to work longer? Where’s my payoff?”

Carstensen: Some might—at first. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer that working longer promises scores of benefits for individuals and societies. Engaging in productive activities outside of the home is associated with cognitive, social and physical benefits in addition to the more obvious financial benefits. It is also proving unrealistic for most people to save enough over the course of a 40- year career to fund a retirement that could last just as long.

Chip: So what can we do?

Gotbaum: One thing we can do is create a legal right to a phased retirement. There’s no reason why retirement has to be this cliff-edge: Work full time until the last day before your 65th birthday and then never work again. Many people can and would phase down gradually—go from full-time to part-time or take lighter responsibilities—if they had the choice. But most people don’t have that choice. They should. Chip: Why a legal right?

Gotbaum: Because it’s often the case that the law leads the culture. There’s lots of talk about phased retirement, but most companies don’t offer it. We should encourage them. Then they can discover what Marc Freedman and Encore have: Intergenerational workforces are smarter and more productive.

Freedman: That’s right. Since we invented “retirement,” there’s no reason we can’t invent a new stage of life, one that fits today’s demographic reality. To start, we should “rebrand” the period of life before retirement around the ideas of purpose and legacy—most fully embodied in the second-career phenomenon. We’ll also need to create a new set of pathways, policies and products—including financial vehicles—to help prepare people for this period.

Carstensen: I agree with Marc, and I think the financial piece is key. Innovative financial products can help people work differently, alternating between working full and part-time. Education should not stop in our early 20s. We should save for intermittent returns to schooling. Society should incentivize employer-based training that includes seasoned workers, as well as HR benefits from employers to fund fellowship/retraining years.

Chip: Sounds like you’ve given financial services a lot to think about. Thanks to all three of you for sharing your ideas with us. NEWS COVERAGE

401(k) Plan Shortcomings Failing As Retirement Income Program By STEVE VERNON AND JAMIE HOPKINS OCTOBER 6, 2016

The current “retirement plan” of choice – 401(k) plans – really aren’t true retirement income plans. While they can be great for accumulating savings, most 401(k) plans don’t do much to help older workers decide if they have enough money to retire, or how to convert their hard- earned savings into a retirement paycheck.

Americans need more help from their retirement plans, they need these plans to take the next step and offer retirement income programs. Recently, collaboration between the Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL) and the Society of Actuaries (SOA) resulted in a new report - Optimizing Retirement Income Solutions in Defined Contribution Retirement Plans: A Framework for Building Retirement Income Portfolios – which shows how retirement plan sponsors can complete the 401(k) plan’s transition from a savings account to a retirement income plan.

Why now? Recently, a number of reports have pointed out that America’s older workers need help with retirement income planning.

• Retirees need help figuring out how much to save for retirement. Several surveys of older workers show that they need and would like help with developing retirement income. Additionally, when asked to guess the amount of savings they need to retire securely, many workers underestimated the amount they would need. • • Current 401(k) plans lack retirement income solutions. In August 2016, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report that highlighted that the majority of older workers do not have access to retirement income solutions in their 401(k) plans. About three-fourths of the plans surveyed did not offer annuities where an insurance company guarantees a lifetime payout. • • In June 2016, the BiPartisan Policy Center issued a comprehensive report with recommendations to address six significant challenges facing our retirement system. One of these recommendations was for plan sponsors to implement lifetime income solutions in defined contribution plans. • • Regulatory developments are enabling the use of retirement income solutions in tax-qualified DC plans. In July 2014, the U.S. Treasury Department issued regulations that clarify how qualified longevity annuity contracts (QLACs) can be implemented in DC plans. In October 2014, Treasury issued regulations that would enable a portion of accounts invested in target date funds to be transferred to deferred annuities.

Despite a strong desire from the public for better retirement income options in 401(k) plans, robust retirement income options are not widespread among defined contribution plans. One primary reason is how plan sponsors view their defined contribution plans. According to one study, 91% view them as savings plans, while only 9% view them as vehicles for providing retirement income.

The challenges The long-term shift from traditional pensions to defined contribution and hybrid defined benefit plans (such as cash balance plans) places significant responsibility and challenges on older workers and retirees to successfully generate retirement income that lasts for the rest of their lives. For example: • Longevity risk is placing a lot of stress on retirement savings, as a retiree might need income for 30 or more years. But, many retirees are not prepared to manage this critical task on their own, especially because there is much uncertainty around how long an individual retiree will actually live.

• Market volatility complicates the task of generating retirement income by managing withdrawals from an investment portfolio throughout retirement. Since 1987 there have been four major market meltdowns. With retirement potentially lasting 20 to 30 years or more, it’s prudent for retirees to expect and plan to survive more meltdowns in their future.

Engineering optimal retirement income solutions The recent SCL/SOA report applies modern portfolio theory (MPT) concepts to the retirement income phase. Just like there are different asset classes for accumulating savings, there are different retirement income classes for generating regular cash flow in retirement. These retirement income classes include:

• Social Security • Annuities from insurance companies • Systematic withdrawal plans (SWPs) using invested assets • Work (Part-time or Full-Time in retirement)

Assets in defined contribution plans, like a 401(k) plan, can be deployed acknowledging how the above retirement income classes might interact. Of course, there can be other sources of retirement income, such as IRAs, home equity, and investments or insurance products owned by the retiree. Ideally, retirees would develop their retirement income strategy by integrating all of their financial resources. NEWS COVERAGE

Brain Game Claims Fail A Big Scientific Test By JON HAMILTON October 3, 2016

Want to be smarter? More focused? Free of memory problems as you age?

If so, don’t count on brain games to help you.

That’s the conclusion of an exhaustive evaluation of the scientific literature on brain training games and programs. It was published Monday in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

“It’s disappointing that the evidence isn’t stronger,” says Daniel Simons, an author of the article and a psychology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“It would be really nice if you could play some games and have it radically change your cognitive abilities,” Simons says. “But the studies don’t show that on objectively measured real-world outcomes.”

The evaluation, done by a team of seven scientists, is a response to a very public disagreement about the effectiveness of brain games, Simons says.

In October 2014, more than 70 scientists published an open letter objecting to marketing claims made by brain training companies. Pretty soon, another group, with more than 100 scientists, published a rebuttal saying brain training has a solid scientific base.

“So you had two consensus statements, each signed by many, many people, that came to essentially opposite conclusions,” Simons says.

In an effort to clarify the issue, Simons and six other scientists reviewed more than 130 studies of brain games and other forms of cognitive training. The evaluation included studies of products from industry giant Lumosity, which has been a prominent sponsor of NPR and other public radio programming.

“We went through each paper and tried to look at the kind of evidence it provided,” Simons says.

That meant asking questions like: How big was the study? Did it have an appropriate control group? Do the results support the marketing claims made by companies?

The scientists found that “many of the studies did not really adhere to what we think of as the best practices,” Simons says.

Some of the studies included only a few participants. Others lacked adequate control groups or failed to account for the placebo effect, which causes people to improve on a test simply because they are trying harder or are more confident.

There were some good studies, Simons says. And they showed that brain games do help people get better at a specific task.

“You can practice, for example, scanning baggage at an airport and looking for a knife,” he says. “And you get really, really good at spotting that knife.” But there was less evidence that people got better at related tasks, like spotting other suspicious items, Simons says. And there was no strong evidence that practicing a narrow skill led to overall improvements in memory or thinking.

That’s disappointing, Simons says, because “what you want to do is be better able to function at work or at school.”

The evaluation got a warm reception from at least some of the scientists who had signed the 2014 letter defending the science behind brain training.

“The evaluation was very even-handed and raised many excellent points,” says George Rebok, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University who has been involved in brain training research for the past 20 years. “It really helped raise the bar in terms of the level of science that we must aspire to.”

Rebok, who says he has no ties to brain training companies, remains optimistic that the right program of brain exercises can improve mental functioning and delay the effects of aging.

One reason brain games haven’t shown a clear benefit so far, he says, may be that they don’t work the brain hard enough or over a long enough time period.

“It takes mental effort and practice to be able to see results,” Rebok says. “If we can implement that long range, I think that there will be a big dividend eventually.”

In the meantime, the brain training industry is facing scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission.

In January, the company behind Lumosity agreed to pay a $2 million fine to settle FTC charges that it made unfounded claims about its brain training program.

And in May, a smaller brain training company called LearningRx agreed to pay a $200,000 fine to settle similar charges. Even so, the Learning Rx website still promises “A better brain at any age.” NEWS COVERAGE

The Weak Evidence Behind Brain-Training Games By ED YONG October 3, 2016

Seven psychologists reviewed every single scientific paper put forward to support these products—and found them wanting.

If you repeat a specific mental task—say, memorizing a string of numbers—you’ll obviously get better at it. But what if your recollection improved more generally? What if, by spending a few minutes a day on that simple task, you could also become better at remembering phone numbers, or recalling facts ahead of an exam, or bringing faces to mind?

This is the seductive logic of the brain-training industry. These companies offer brief, simple video games that are meant to boost mental abilities like memory, attention, and processing speed. By reacting to on-screen objects as quickly as possible, you could become better at spotting details in your environment, like approaching cars or pedestrians. Or by holding numbers in your mind as they flash by, you can increase your intelligence. The tasks vary but the idea is always the same: By playing these specific games, you secretly train deeper mental abilities, and so improve every aspect of your life that depends on those abilities—all while having fun.

One product, BrainHQ from Posit Science, promises everything from “2x faster visual processing speed” and “10+ years in memory” to “more happy days,” “lower medical costs,” “reversal of age-related slowing,” and “more self-confidence.” Another, Cogmed, claims to have improved “attention in many with ADHD,” as well as “learning outcomes in reading and math [for] underperforming students.” Lumosity by Lumos Labs, perhaps the most pervasively marketed of them all, ran ads that included characters from the Pixar film Inside Out.

People are certainly buying the hype—and the games. According to one set of estimates, consumers spent $715 million on these games in 2013, and are set to spend $3.38 billion by 2020.

And they might be wasting their money, according to a team of seven psychologists led by Daniel Simons at the University of Illinois. The team, most of whom have worked on brain-training themselves but have not received money from the industry, spent two years reviewing every single scientific paper cited by leading brain-training companies in support their products—374 in total.

Their review was published today, and it makes for stark reading. The studies, they concluded, suffer from a litany of important weaknesses, and provide little or no evidence that the games improve anything other than the specific tasks being trained. People get better at playing the games, but there are no convincing signs that those improvements transfer to general mental skills or to everyday life. “If you want to remember which drugs you have to take, or your schedule for the day, you’re better off training those instead,” says Simons.

“The review really leaves nothing out—and the evidence is unimpressive,” says Ulrich Mayr from the University of Oregon, who studies mental flexibility. “Seeing it so clearly is a service for the whole field.” Michael Kane from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, who studies attention and memory, agrees. “It’s a tour de force,” he says. “It’s exceedingly fair, and a model of what a skeptical but open-minded evaluation of evidence should look like.” (Both Mayr and Kane recently signed a consensus statement from 70 psychologists and neuroscientists disputing the “frequently exaggerated and at times misleading” claims around brain-training games.)

Open-minded? Hardly, says Henry Mahncke, a neuroscientist and CEO of Posit Science, who accuses Simons’s team of being biased and inaccurate. “They twisted every one of those studies to fit their theories that cognitive training can’t work,” he says. “This is what happens when one paradigm topples another. It’s like [the authors] locked themselves in a cell for the last 100 years and talk about a style of psychology uncontaminated by neuroscience.” Brain-training, he asserts, isn’t a magic bullet, but does indeed generalize to important real-world tasks. To say otherwise is “completely wrong.” Others in the field are more sanguine. “The evidence could be stronger,” says George Rebok from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who took part in one of the best brain-training studies around. “The review is very timely, and will help us raise the bar on the science of brain-training.” Similarly, Erica Perng, director of communications for Lumos Labs, sent a statement saying: “We strongly believe in the value of cognitive training. Our hope is that this debate enables more researchers to produce high-quality, replicable results that will move both the industry and scientific community forward.”ility into labor markets to include all ages and provide tax incentives for older workers and their employers — including older entrepreneurs — to fit with longer, healthier lives.

The longevity revolution is creating exciting opportunities unlike any we’ve seen before. By understanding their true potential and empowering our older citizens to become dynamic contributors to productivity and growth, we can open a new frontier for individuals, businesses and countries to compete and prosper in the future.

Brain-training certainly makes intuitive sense, which partly explains its charm. But it butts up against 100 years of psychological studies showing that practice only makes perfect in limited ways. “The things you train will improve, but they don’t generalize,” says Simons. Chess grandmasters can recall the position of every piece on a board, but aren’t better at remembering anything else, for example. Or, “if you search baggage scans for a knife, you don’t get better at spotting guns—or maybe not even other knives.”

But over the past few decades, researchers finally seemed to be bucking that trend, and seeing the “transfer effects” that had long eluded their peers. Their studies fueled the hope and hype of brain-training, and are frequently listed in support of it. For example, a website called Cognitive Training Data, created by the chief scientific officer of Posit Science, lists 132 such studies. Accompanying them is another consensus statement with 133 signatories that describes a “substantial and growing body of evidence shows that certain cognitive training regimens can significantly improve cognitive function, including in ways that generalize to everyday life.”

That evidence is “inadequate,” say Simons and his colleagues. Many of the studies are too small to produce statistically reliable results. Others seem to have selectively reported and analyzed parts of their data. “It’s astonishing how poor some of the experimental designs have been, violating many of the most fundamental principles that we regularly teach to undergraduates in introductory courses,” says Kane.

For example, to show that brain-training works, you need a good control group—that is, you need to compare people who play the games against others who didn’t. More than that, the people who aren’t being trained need to do something of equal time and effort—otherwise, you couldn’t say if the brain-training group was benefiting because of those specific games, or just because they were playing any game at all. Very few studies met these standards. Some had no control group at all. Some asked the control volunteers to just sit around passively. Some gave them tasks that weren’t really comparable, like watching educational DVDs.

And very few studies accounted for expectations. People who play brain-training games might reasonably expect to become smarter, so they might do better in later tests simply because they were more motivated or confident. These effects are a problem for psychological studies; unlike medical trials, where placebo pills can be made indistinguishable from actual drugs, brain-training players will always know what they’re doing. You can’t get rid of expectation effects, but you can at least measure and adjust them—and no study did. “I don’t fault studies for not doing this perfectly,” says Simons, “but most didn’t come close.”

That’s unrealistic, counters Mahncke. “What they want is a control that is identical to the intervention and doesn’t improve cognitive function. That can’t be done,” he says. “You need to look at the picture that emerges from all these controls across these studies. These folks came to the forest and looked at every tree, but at no point did they step back and say: Wow, we have a forest full of trees.”

Simons argues that the size of the forest has been greatly exaggerated. For example, among the 132 papers cited by the Cognitive Brain Data website, 21 reviewed or analyzed results from earlier studies without presenting anything new. In other cases, results from the same study had been spread across several papers, and were then treated as independent entities. “There’s a relatively small set of independent data sets behind the large numbers of papers that the industry likes to cite,” says Mayr. “This has always bugged the hell out of me.”

It wasn’t all bad. The team singled out a few studies for their quality, including the ACTIVE trial—a large, thorough, and meticulously planned study involved over 2,800 elderly people. “It met good practice, especially compared to everything else,” says Simons. The volunteers were randomly assigned to train their memory, reasoning, or processing speed, or to sit passively. Each of the three trained groups could act as a control for the others—they all made the same effort, but were working on very different skills. But even ACTIVE didn’t find strong evidence for transfer effects. “You practice fast responses, you get faster on a keyboard. You practice memory, you get better performance in memory tests,” says Simons. “There was almost no crossover.” Nor were there clear signs that any group got better at everyday tests involving the same skills they had trained.

“I think the evidence [for transfer] is admittedly weak,” says Rebok, who worked on the trial. He notes that some of the volunteers became better at managing their medications, preparing meals, and other activities of daily life—but these improvements were all based on the volunteers’ own reports. “If people think they should improve, and are asked repeatedly about whether they have, they will be more likely to report improvements,” says Simons. What’s more, “the trial gave counseling sessions to help people apply what they were doing to the real world.”

Even if you take the claims of transfer effects at face value, it’s unclear if the benefits are big enough to be worth the time and money spent on these products. For example, brain-training proponents note that ACTIVE volunteers who trained their brain speed were half as likely to experience a car crash. That sounds incredible, but based on the absolute figures from the study, Simons’ team calculated that someone who did the training could expect one fewer crash every 200 years.

Mahncke thinks the criticism is absurd. “[The authors] are moral monsters for making that argument, and you can quote me on that,” he says. “This is a public health [issue]. Senior driving is a problem, which is important at a population level. A person in health sciences who argued that we shouldn’t reduce heart attacks because heart attacks are rare would be rightfully drummed out of the profession.”

To run with his analogy, a new heart disease drug would never be assessed in isolation; it would instead be compared to the best drugs on the market to see if it was any better. So, are brain-training games better than the alternatives? “If you want to improve driving in the elderly, you’re probably going to get a more efficient benefit practicing the things that actually get impaired like making left turns, rather than doing it indirectly,” says Simons.

Dorothy Bishop, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, agrees. These games, she notes, “encourage people to engage in solitary activities at home, when they could be getting out and doing something that would not only stimulate the brain, but also be fun and sociable, such as learning a foreign language.”

Or, say, taking classes. “My joking answer to ‘Does brain training work?’ is: Yes, it’s called school,” says Elizabeth Stine-Morrow, an educational psychologist from the University of Illinois and one of Simons’s team of seven. But formal education, she notes, is a rich set of social and intellectual experiences in which kids are learning in many different contexts, not practicing the same decontextualized tasks again and again. “I don’t want people to get discouraged from reading this, and think that important abilities are unchangeable,” she adds. “It’s not impossible, just more complicated than brain-training companies would have us believe.”

She and her colleagues end their 70-page review with 12 pages of recommendations for conducting better brain-training studies in the future. The tips are fair, says Rebok, but the problem is that such studies are very expensive. “ACTIVE cost millions of dollars and took us 10 years to do. It’s the gold standard but there are problems with it,” he says. “If you’re going to raise the bar, how do you get there?”

That might be especially difficult given the controversy generated by the field’s own self-delivered hype. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission ruled that Lumos Labs had “deceived consumers with unfounded claims.” Through extensive advertising, they claimed that their games would boost performance at work and school, or reduce the mental decline of old age, but they “simply did not have the science to back up its ads.” The company agreed to pay a $2 million fine.

“Those who market brain-training products have effectively boxed themselves in,” says Bishop. “I sometimes get approached by such people because they know that without evidence from a proper trial, they won’t be taken seriously. I don’t want to spend my time doing a trial of an intervention I’m dubious about, but I’m also aware that if they do the trial themselves, they’ll be accused of conflict of interest. I suspect the moral here is that it is very dangerous to launch into commercialization of a product before you have solid evidence of effectiveness, because it’s extremely hard to get it later on.” NEWS COVERAGE

Seizing Longevity’s Competitive Advantages By ANDREW SIEG September 19, 2016

We are at the beginning of a longevity revolution. The aging megatrend — caused by increased life expectancies and plummeting birthrates — will disrupt traditional working norms, challenge virtually all businesses and transform society’s structure.

Conventional thinking holds that this upheaval will trigger an economic calamity. The worldforce will wither, savings will disappear and markets will collapse.

To the contrary, I believe aging could generate the most significant economic opportunity of our lifetimes. If we can successfully encourage individuals, employers and national leaders to think and act in new ways, we have an opportunity to seize the advantages of longevity and drive unprecedented growth.

To realize this competitive advantage, corporations will need to experiment with different policies to retain and empower their older employees.

Longevity Revolution Means Retiring Retirement First, the baby boomer generation will “retire retirement.”

The concept of formally ending work at age 65 applies to a previous century. Today, people in their 60s are taking on new leadership roles, starting businesses, even competing in triathlons.

Many consumer companies are gearing their businesses toward a growing “active aging” market.

This shedding of outdated stereotypes should be recognized in the workplace as well. Seventy-two percent of pre-retirees want to work past 65, and nearly half of current retirees either have worked in retirement or plan to, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch/Age Wave 2015 report, Work in Retirement: Myths and Motivations.

The baby boomers are taking the lead in creating an entirely new life stage. They’re using flexible work arrangements, part-time responsibilities, entrepreneurship and the growing digital economy to transform later-life work into an engine for financial sustainability and personal fulfillment.

An Immense, Untapped Pool of Talent As this new approach to work gains momentum, savvy corporate leaders will discover that older employees represent an immense, untapped pool of talent and knowledge.

Older workers are their organizations’ pillars: more loyal, better collaborators and more effective mentors, according to the Stanford Center on Longevity’s 2014 report, Adapting to an Aging Workforce. They also often form the core of intergenerational teams that combine varied strengths for higher productivity, Stanford says.

To realize this competitive advantage, corporations will need to experiment with different policies to retain and empower their older employees. The latter will want to work in new capacities and learn additional skills, even as they juggle a changing mix of personal responsibilities, including the looming challenge of elder care. So, I see us embracing an approach that incorporates flexible scheduling, telecommuting and realigned responsibilities, as well as a commitment to age-friendly workplaces and investments in the technological skills of all employees.

Navigating the Changing Financial Landscape As the workplace adapts, we must also ask how employees will navigate the changing financial landscape.

At Bank of America Merrill Lynch, we’ve launched a longevity training program for our financial advisers and our corporate clients’ HR and benefits professionals. This program, developed with the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California, is designed to help companies address their employees’ financial needs and aspirations regarding work, health, family and retirement. We also understand how important it is to accommodate employees who care for aging loved ones — as they represent a growing population in our aging world.

Together, these individual, social and corporate changes could propel the U.S. into a global leadership position in regard to longevity, especially if we encourage the kind of national policies I’ve outlined.

In East Asia and Europe, according to a report by the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of State, we’re already seeing the dangers of national responses that try to preserve the status quo despite their aging populations. For instance, some have inflexible labor markets and social support systems that assume an age at which people are no longer productive.

Benefits of Aging for the Workforce Now is the time to move in a new and better direction and to reap the benefits of aging for our workforce.

Contrary to popular belief, countries with lower levels of early retirement actually have lower overall unemployment rates and higher rates of employment of the young, according to Axel Börsch-Supan’s Silver Economy: Pipe Dream or Realistic Possibility? Further, increasing the number of 65+ workers in the UK by just 2.6 percent a year could increase GDP per capita by as much as 6 percent, according to the International Longevity Centre-UK’s The Missing Million: Illuminating the Employment Challenges of the Over 50s.

Economic and tax policies must also become vehicles to foster these net benefits. We will need to build greater flexibility into labor markets to include all ages and provide tax incentives for older workers and their employers — including older entrepreneurs — to fit with longer, healthier lives.

The longevity revolution is creating exciting opportunities unlike any we’ve seen before. By understanding their true potential and empowering our older citizens to become dynamic contributors to productivity and growth, we can open a new frontier for individuals, businesses and countries to compete and prosper in the future. NEWS COVERAGE

A call for intergenerational engagement: New report urges linking children with older adults By BECKY BACH September 13, 2016

Bringing older adults and children together can offer both groups big benefits, a new Stanford report concludes.

“There is growing reason to think that older people may be just the resource children need,” said Laura Carstensen, PhD, who led the report and is the founding director of the Stanford Center for Longevity. A Stanford News article explains:

“The aging population has ‘distinctive qualities to meet the needs of youth,’ [Carstensen] and her co-authors wrote. ‘Older adults are exceptionally suited to meet these needs in part because they welcome meaningful, productive activity and engagement. They seek – and need – purpose in their lives.’

As for older adults, the report pointed out, they benefit as well, experiencing emotional satisfaction in relationships with young people.”

For children, relationships with older adults, as well as with their parents, offer some invaluable benefits:

“Young adults require emotional skills to succeed in life, Carstensen said. These are the attitudes, behaviors and strategies required to operate as a productive adult in an increasingly complex and technical world. And they are the types of skills and experiences that older adults have in abundance due to their life experiences.

‘Age-related increases in wisdom, life experiences and emotional stability are well-documented, as is a drive to give to others in a meaningful way,’ she said.”

Encouraging this “intergenerational engagement” will require societal change, although some projects that promote intergenerational volunteering are underway. The report was co-sponsored by Encore.org and by the David & Lucile Packard Foundation. NEWS COVERAGE

A critical missing piece in 401(k) plans By STEVE VERNON September 13, 2016

“Workers relying in large part on their 401(k) plan in retirement may not always have a feasible way to make their savings last throughout retirement.” That’s the opening line of an insightful report recently released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). It follows on the heels of another recent report prepared by the Bipartisan Policy Center that reached similar conclusions.

The GAO study included a survey of 11 administrators of 401(k) plans covering 40 percent of all 401(k) assets at the end of 2014. About two- thirds of the plans didn’t offer payout options that are intended to last a lifetime, and about three-fourths didn’t offer annuities in which an insurance company guarantees a lifetime payout.

The GAO explores various risks older workers face when deciding how to deploy their retirement savings:

• Poor investment returns just prior to or just after retirement, known as “sequence of returns” risk, can have a serious impact on older workers or retirees who have less time to make up for lost savings, either by increasing contributions or working longer. • Participants who want to use a portion of their savings to buy an annuity face the risk that interest rates will be low at the time they retire, thereby reducing their retirement income. • Later in retirement, some retirees may experience cognitive decline that affects their ability to manage their savings, leaving them open to be targeted by fraudsters. • Many retirees face longevity risk -- the chance that they’ll outlive their savings. The longer a retiree lives, the greater the exposure to a range of risks such as stock market crashes and inflation eroding the value of their savings.

These are indeed daunting challenges, and it should be no surprise that older workers would appreciate help to address them. Recent studies conducted by the Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL) and the Society of Actuaries (SOA) show how employer-sponsored 401(k) plans and their advisers and administrators can use their resources to construct a menu of diversified retirement income options. Such a menu would complement their investment lineup and could include systematic withdrawal plans using the plan’s investment funds, an annuity bidding platform or payout options to help optimize Social Security payments.

One important conclusion from the SCL/SOA studies is that 401(k) plan sponsors have the potential to increase their participants’ retirement incomes by 5 percent to 20 percent by offering retirement income programs with institutional pricing instead of the standard retail pricing individuals might have to pay on their own.

In a prior study, the GAO reported that six countries had developed innovative approaches and strategies to help mitigate the financial risks their older workers face in securing adequate retirement income, illustrating that it’s possible to address the risks described above. The countries are Australia, Canada, Chile, Singapore, Switzerland and the U.K.

The GAO study also identified one significant barrier to widespread adoption of retirement income options by employers: their vulnerability to lawsuits by participants who might experience unfavorable outcomes from their choices or who are otherwise disappointed with their options.

The GAO included seven recommendations to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) that would offer employers limited liability relief. And according to the GAO, DOL generally agrees with the GAO’s observations and describes the actions it would take to address the intent of the GAO’s recommendations. So it’s possible that help is on the way. Employer-sponsored 401(k) plans are in a unique position to help older workers convert their hard-earned retirement savings into reliable income without any incentive that might influence their participants’ decision-making. This objectivity will help older workers feel more confident about their retirement.

Retirement income options might become more widespread if older workers create the demand with their employers. If you’d like help creating retirement income from your 401(k), share this story with your employer and diplomatically ask to explore a program of retirement income. If enough co-workers make the same request, you might make it happen. And it could become an important part of your retirement planning. NEWS COVERAGE

How Higher Education Can Aid Life Transitions By PHILIP PIZZO September 12, 2016

Technology will continue to change our lives in amazing ways, influencing our access to knowledge, how we monitor and improve our well- being and how we communicate and create a social connectedness that transcends boundaries and borders. However, despite the emergence of increasingly sophisticated ways to connect people with people, information technology has not replaced forming a community in deeply personal ways.

For example, just a few short years ago, the conventional wisdom was that new technologies would replace the need to travel to meetings, attend conferences or even go to school. It would be cheaper and faster to have everything available at our fingertips — when we wanted it, regardless of where the need or interest arose.

To a remarkable degree, this has happened. We almost take for granted how easy it is to answer a question, probe a topic, connect with a friend or colleague or monitor the metrics of physical activities.

The Desire for Connection And we do it exuberantly. A recent survey at Baylor University suggests that students spend up to 10 hours a day on various devices. But despite dramatic changes in social networking, we still want to connect personally, go to school together or have contact with our caregivers.

For example, for those transitioning from adolescence to adulthood and have the opportunity, there is still a strong desire to attend college, live residentially and create linkages to communities that will guide their intellectual, social, moral and physical development. A “college experience” is more than acquiring knowledge — it’s a social exploration with peers and teachers that helps to shape life’s direction(s).

A college education is also an important predictor of income and life expectancy. But increasing the lifespan also poses challenges.

Contributing After Age 65 While the impact of early education can be lifelong, satisfaction in most jobs wanes over the years. In some career pathways, it is extinguished by the fourth or fifth decade of life. Traditionally, that has led many to simply hang on to their job and limp or coast toward retirement in the sixth decade of life. But that norm is becoming increasingly antiquated.

During the past century, life expectancy has increased 30 years in the United States. By 2030, some 20 percent of the population will be over 65 years of age. Although a number of these individuals aspire to “retirement,” many others would prefer to continue contributing, working or volunteering in activities that provide meaning and value and foster connections and community building.

Can Universities Help Midlife Navigation? Although some individuals can make this transition on their own, many would benefit from resources or programs to help guide them to the next steps in the life journey. Since education played a key role in launching the first phase of that journey, an important question is whether universities can and should play a role in helping individuals navigate midlife.

Universities, colleges and community colleges have the opportunity to create programs for people in midlife who seek personal transformation, reinvention and redirection. There are many approaches to pursue — from continuing education and online programming to career assistance and planning activities. While each approach can have value, it is important to ask how much programs need to engage the fundamental elements of the “college experience” that create community and purpose — and ideally also foster physical and emotional development. Fostering Paths for Learning and Sharing In addition to transforming midlife for individuals, novel programs in midlife education could have a transformative impact on higher education by fostering informal and formal paths for intergenerational learning, teaching and sharing. This has implications for impact on individuals, universities and society — and the overall life journey from a broad social, economic and health perspective.

Based on the experience of pilot programs at Harvard and Stanford, along with exploratory programs at Pace University, Wagner College, the University of Connecticut, Arizona State University and others, it is becoming clear that these institutional experiments have value.

These programs suggest that higher education should seek ways to embrace and foster opportunities for midlife renewal that serve the needs of individuals, their communities and alumni, as well as our nation and the world. NEWS COVERAGE

Older people offer resources that children need, Stanford report says By CLIFTON B. PARKER September 8, 2016

When older adults contribute to the well-being of youth, it cultivates a sense of purpose and extends benefits both ways, according to a new Stanford report.

Such relationships are important for society. They can help ensure that children and teens receive the kind of attention and mentoring they often lack, especially among the most vulnerable populations, the Stanford scholars said. These relationships also offer older adults opportunities to learn about new technology and trends, and experience the excitement of seeing the world through a younger perspective.

Laura Carstensen, a Stanford psychology professor who led the report and is the director of the Stanford Center for Longevity, said, “Contrary to widespread beliefs that older populations consume resources that would otherwise go to youth, there is growing reason to think that older people may be just the resource children need.”

Carstensen’s prior research has found that as people age, their brains actually improve in many ways, including in complex problem-solving and emotional skills. “It is a huge loss for society not to offer such counsel and experience to others, especially young people,” she said.

The aging population has “distinctive qualities to meet the needs of youth,” she and her co-authors wrote. “Older adults are exceptionally suited to meet these needs in part because they welcome meaningful, productive activity and engagement. They seek – and need – purpose in their lives.”

As for older adults, the report pointed out, they benefit as well, experiencing emotional satisfaction in relationships with young people. One way to achieve such contact is through volunteer service, which is associated with better physical health and cognitive performance for aging people. From a societal view, these interactions are positive, too.

“Focusing volunteer efforts on young people improve their (young people’s) chances of success in life,” Carstensen said. “These mutual benefits are perhaps the most compelling reason for programs that connect young and old.”

Benefits for underprivileged children The Stanford Center on Longevity, Encore.org and the Packard Foundation sponsored the report, “Hidden in Plain Sight: How Intergenerational Relationships Can Transform Our Future.”

The document describes widening socioeconomic and educational gaps among young people in the U.S., bringing to light a critical need for society to focus on ways to help vulnerable young men and women.

“A large proportion of youth lack the resources needed for success, their educational pathways and well-being impeded by poverty, perpetuating an ever deeper gulf between those who succeed in life and those who struggle,” the report stated.

The opportunity exists for older adults to fill these mentoring roles, Carstensen said. Children now in grade school will grow up in societies filled with old people. “Most children – not just a lucky few – will grow up in families in which four or five generations are alive at the same time,” she said. Young adults require emotional skills to succeed in life, Carstensen said. These are the attitudes, behaviors and strategies required to operate as a productive adult in an increasingly complex and technical world. And they are the types of skills and experiences that older adults have in abundance due to their life experiences.

“These skills, such as critical thinking, problem-solving and social interaction, influence social connections and sense of purpose. They are key to success in school and work, and they enable people to contribute meaningfully to society,” the report noted.

Parents matter, of course, but the research shows that significant benefits exist for children who have an older adult mentor in addition to their parents, Carstensen said.

“Age-related increases in wisdom, life experiences and emotional stability are well-documented, as is a drive to give to others in a meaningful way,” she said.

Carstensen and her colleagues call for a national movement that encourages “intergenerational engagement” between the young and old alike. She acknowledged the challenge of such an undertaking, as it requires a change in the way people and society view young-old interactions and relationships.

“To date, older people do not volunteer at higher rates than younger adults. Creating a social norm that encourages generativity (the concern for establishing and guiding the next generation) will require institutional and cultural change,” she said.

The study originated in the 2014 “Pass It On” conference at Stanford, which explored the need to mobilize older adults across the country to help guide at-risk children into adulthood. NEWS COVERAGE

Prepare for the Rising Cost of Living in Retirement By KATIE LIBBE September 1, 2016

Since a young age, many of us have had the “save for retirement” message on our minds. It is virtually impossible to ignore the advice on making the most of 401(k)s and investing additional funds so that when the time arrives you have the financial wherewithal to enjoy retirement.

As part of the retirement planning process, setting up what will be your proposed monthly and/or annual budget plays a pivotal role in determining how much will be enough for you to attain the lifestyle you are looking for. Funds for basics such as housing, food and medical always come first, and then what is left can go toward travel, dining out, and any other activity that you have been itching to pursue over the years.

With all of that taken into account, you also need to factor in inflation. Assuming you are not right on the verge of retirement, it is no secret that your purchasing power will look a lot different by the time you retire. Consider this: the average annual inflation rate since the government started keeping track in 1913 is approximately 3.2 percent. That doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that at that rate, prices will double every 20 years. The fact is that everything will be more expensive and that needs to be factored in when determining how much you really need to save.

However, one aspect that is often overlooked and will likely also have a critical impact on your retirement spending power is the impact of inflation while you are in retirement.

The Stanford Center on Longevity recently reported that Americans are living an average of 30 years longer, which will likely further extend the length of traditional retirement. From the time you step out of the workforce and begin putting your retirement plans into action, the meter is running for the rising cost of living. So if you planned on living off of $3,000 a month, that amount might be fine for the first few years of your retirement. But by the time you reach the middle to later years of your retirement, you might actually need more than $4,000 a month to maintain your lifestyle.

Indeed, it is easy to overlook this aspect of retirement as during your working years, pay scales and raises can help you keep pace with the increased cost of living. However, once you leave the workforce, it is critical to ensure you have a plan in place. Think of it as the need to give yourself an annual increase – the only issue being that you’re the “employer” and therefore responsible for funding the increase.

So how do you go about preparing for inflation while in retirement? While simply living more modestly seems like an easy answer, do not underestimate the impact of inflation. No one likes surprises, particularly during retirement, and having to cut back more than you thought you would need to might be an unpleasant choice and can be avoided with proper planning.

Thinking more proactively, adjusting the amount you are saving for retirement is a step to consider. Save more during your working years keeping in mind that you will need to give yourself that annual increase in retirement. Go beyond planning solely around the total nest egg you will need based just on how far your money will stretch in the years to come. Set aside money for what can easily be a 20- to 30-year period of rising costs once you hit the retirement finish line.

Reliance on Social Security also is a potential pitfall for proper planning. Remember that even if Social Security is still around, do not make any assumptions that it will necessarily adjust each year to match the cost of living. In fact, that possibility is already a reality. In 2016 the Social Security Administration is not even providing its typical cost of living increase. A strong option for consideration is to ensure that a portion of your overall financial portfolio is designed to help you obtain guaranteed income that has the potential to increase as the years go by in your retirement. A financial planner can help determine an appropriate approach for you, via selected financial products and/or adapting the risk tolerance of your assets to help meet your financial needs and goals.

However, one potential issue to bear in mind is the assumption that equities will outpace inflation. While this is a common approach for the accumulation phase of your retirement strategy, it is important to consider additional ways to help address inflation within retirement so that a bear market doesn’t wreak havoc on your plans. Again, there are selected financial vehicles can help meet this need.

So, yes, plan for retirement. But don’t forget to have a plan for once you get there. Taking some simple steps today will allow you to enjoy a long retirement that can be rewarding. NEWS COVERAGE

The aging paradox: The older we get, the happier we are By DEBORAH NETBURN August 24, 2016

Believe it or not, there are upsides to getting older.

Yes, your physical health is likely to decline as you age. And unfortunately, your cognitive abilities like learning new skills and remembering things is likely to suffer too.

But despite such downsides, research suggests that your overall mental health, including your mood, your sense of well-being and your ability to handle stress, just keeps improving right up until the very end of life.

Consider it something to look forward to.

In a recent survey of more than 1,500 San Diego residents aged 21 to 99, researchers report that people in their 20s were the most stressed out and depressed, while those in their 90s were the most content.

There were no dips in well-being in midlife, and no tapering off of well-being at the end of life.

Instead scientists found a clear, linear relationship between age and mental health: The older people were, the happier they felt.

“The consistency was really striking,” said Dilip Jeste, director of the UC San Diego Center for Healthy Aging and senior author of the study. “People who were in older life were happier, more satisfied, less depressed, had less anxiety and less perceived stress than younger respondents.”

The results were published Wednesday in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Experts on the psychology of aging say the new findings add to a growing body of research that suggests there are emotional benefits to getting older.

“In the literature it’s called the paradox of aging,” said Laura Carstensen, director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, who was not involved in the work. “How can it be that given the many well-documented losses that occur with age, we also see this improvement in emotional well- being?”

As it happens, Carstensen does not think this is a paradox at all.

In her own work, she has found evidence that people’s goals and reasoning change as they come to appreciate their mortality and recognize that their time on Earth is finite.

“When people face endings they tend to shift from goals about exploration and expanding horizons to ones about savoring relationships and focusing on meaningful activities,” she said. “When you focus on emotionally meaningful goals, life gets better, you feel better, and the negative emotions become less frequent and more fleeting when they occur.” The authors of the new work also suggest that improved mental health in old age could be due to the wisdom people acquire as they grow older.

Jeste defines wisdom as a mutli-component personality trait that includes empathy, compassion, self-knowledge, openness to new ideas, decisiveness, emotional regulation and doing things for others rather than for yourself.

“As we get older, we make better social decisions because we are more experienced, and that’s where wisdom comes into play,” he said.

Another possible explanation for the emotional benefits of aging could stem from the physiology of the brain, the authors said.

Brain-imaging studies show that older people are less responsive to stressful images than younger people.

When scientists showed older and younger adults pictures of a smiling baby — an image designed to make everyone happy — both groups exhibited increased activation in the part of the brain associated with emotion. However, while a disturbing image of a car accident evoked a lot of activity in the emotional region of the brain of young people, older people had a much more subdued response.

Arthur Stone, a psychologist and head of the USC Dornsife Center for Self-Report Science who was not involved in the study, said that while the various explanations for the aging paradox are intriguing, there is still still no definitive finding that can explain the phenomenon.

“There’s lots of speculation about why older people are happier and having better moods even when their cognitive and physical health is in decline, but we still don’t have anything that fully explains what is going on,” he said. “It’s a big puzzle, and an important puzzle.”

Another important finding of the study is that despite our culture’s obsession with youth, it turns out that the 20s and 30s are generally a very stressful time for many young adults who are plagued by anxiety and depression.

“This ‘fountain of youth’ is associated with a far worse level of psychological well-being than during any other period of adulthood,” the authors said.

They noted that there are many pressures unique to this life phase including establishing a career, finding a life partner and navigating financial issues.

“It could be that age is associated with a reduction in risk factors for mental health,” said Darrell Worthy, a professor of cognitive psychology at Texas A&M University, who was not involved in the work. “Older adults may not have to deal with these stressors as much.”

The authors noted that the study does have some limitations.

Participants were contacted via landline, meaning the experiences of people who have only cellphones were not included in the results.

In addition, people were excluded from taking part in the survey if they had dementia, lived in a nursing home or had a terminal illness. That means the elderly participants were, on the whole, fairly healthy, which might influence their sense of well-being.

Finally, everyone involved in the survey lived in sunny San Diego. It is possible that aging in Michigan could be very different than aging in Southern California.

Still, Carstensen said the study had major implications, especially considering that within just a few years, more people on the planet will be over 60 than under 15.

“Policy leaders are saying, ‘How are we going to cope with all these old people?’ ” she said. “But a population who are in good mental health, emotionally stable, more grateful, and more likely to forgive are a pretty great resource for a society with so much strife and war.” NEWS COVERAGE

Utilizing the Gift of Time By DEBBIE CARLSON August 19, 2016

The older people get, the more challenging it can be to make friends, and that’s especially true after retirement as work is one of the most common ways to meet people.

Research from the Stanford Center on Longevity shows of all the age groups, baby boomers show the most signs of disengaging from traditional modes of social relationships, said Laura Carstensen, founding director of the center and a psychology professor at Stanford University.

For people who move far distances after retirement, making new friends can be doubly difficult because they may not know anyone in their new town.

“When people pick up and relocate, there’s a social risk to doing that,” Carstensen said.

A 2015 retiree survey by the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies aligns with the Stanford Center’s findings. When Transamerica asked people over the age of 50 about their experiences in retirement, 18 percent of respondents ages 50 to 59 said they felt isolated and lonely, versus 11 percent overall. Poor finances and health played a part in that experience, but of those who said they felt lonely, 49 percent said they had moved to a new home.

Social networks changing How people form social networks is changing too, which may make it harder to establish friendships.

“We’re seeing changes in the tendencies to engage in places where people have made friends,” Carstensen said.

Across the board, she said, fewer Americans are attending religious services or engaging in community organizations, two areas where people tended to congregate and meet like-minded people.

“It is a challenge (because) superimposed on those secular trends is a developmental tendency for people to prune social networks as they get older … and get rid of those people not particularly emotionally close or meaningful,” Carstensen said, which makes it difficult for a new person to break in and establish a fresh social network.

Given these unique challenges, retirees may have to work a bit harder to make friends, but it’s not impossible.

Tap into passion Dr. Elizabeth Landsverk, geriatric medicine and dementia specialist and an adjunct clinical professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said that when building a social network, people should ask what makes them happy.

“What do you want out of life? What do you want out of a friendship?” she said.

Volunteering is one way to tap into that passion, said Lisa Marsh Ryerson, president of the AARP Foundation. “Building social connection or meaning around that passion is a really great way to meet people,” she said.

Catherine Collinson, president of the Transamerica Center, said volunteering is a free activity that can also help people build skills and perhaps translate that into part-time paid work. A lack of finances can sometimes lead to isolation, their survey found, so work may alleviate some of the financial pressure and build a bigger pool of people to meet.

“(Volunteering) can lead to greater sense of purpose and enjoyment of life,” Collinson said.

Give it time Often relationships go through the superficial stage before they become meaningful, but Carstensen said with age, some people are less interested in superficial relationships. That means people seeking new friends might have to keep at it, which is why creating a routine, such as going to the same place at the same time each week, can help.

“Go out there, be proactive and don’t be discouraged right away,” Carstensen said.

For people who haven’t made new friends in a while, it may be intimidating. People shouldn’t discount what their wisdom and skills can offer others, Landsverk said.

“The biggest issue I see is folks have this negative self-talk. ‘Oh they wouldn’t want me. Or I can’t do that,’” she said.

Use technology Technology is changing how we interact and can be good, all the experts said, even though there is very little data to prove how social media can help. Some of the real advantages of technology is it’s easier for people to find values-based places, even if they aren’t local, Carstensen said, who added that the Stanford Center is starting to study the effects of technology on relationships.

Phone calls, social media and even email can help people communicate with distant friends, and for people struggling to make new acquaintances, they should use all available technology to stay current, Marsh Ryerson said.

“Staying connected with friends and family from your former location, and knowing you can (make friends) might help translate to, ‘OK, I can do this, I can join a group and meet people in my new location,’” she said, adding, “when you talk to your connections, you’re reminded and they remind you of the contributions you make to that friendship or that social group, which is and of itself, confidence boosting, from my point of view.” NEWS COVERAGE

Utilizing the Gift of Time By KATIE LIBBE July 26, 2016

Go to school. Get a job. Get married. Raise a family. Retire. The American dream all packaged up with the right stages at the right time. But what if someone told you that you now have a gift of 30 extra years of life to live at any stage?

What would you do with those extra years? Spend more time with family? Live overseas pursuing the dream job that life pushed aside years ago? Although it may be surprising to many, that gift is the new reality.

According to the Stanford Center on Longevity, Americans are living an average of 30 years longer than they did a century ago. However, for many, the prospect of living longer has simply become code for “extended retirement.” Although this fits with the traditional way we’ve been conditioned to think about life – a linear track that has been the de facto life template for generations – longevity is causing many people to rethink their major life choices, the paths they may take and alternative possibilities for their future. Longevity is the opportunity to turn the traditional paradigm of life on its head and, in turn, revisit the customary path of retirement planning.

Taking a step back, there is no doubt that Americans are excited to have 30 extra years to work with. According to the The Gift of Time study from Allianz Life Insurance Co. of North America, in which we partnered with the Stanford Center on Longevity, more than nine in 10 Americans expressed having a favorable view of living 30 extra years. In addition, given the addition of these 30 years, 49 percent of Americans would choose a nontraditional life path that fits their interests rather than the formulaic approach we are all used to living.

And there is good reason they feel this way. As people contemplate their lives, they realize that taking more risks could have provided the opportunity for richer experiences, and that extra time and freedom would let them do things differently. Sadly, nearly a third of Americans surveyed said they regret the major life choices they have made, including not following their dreams, not taking risks with their career and not taking risks with their lives in general (new jobs, going back to school, etc.).

How would Americans take advantage of a do-over? Offered with this gift of 30 more years, 56 percent of respondents would travel extensively, 35 percent would live in a different place, and 29 percent would pursue a dream or start their own business. And many fully believe it is never too late to turn traditional retirement upside down. Sixty-five percent of Americans do not think people should wait until retirement to explore, travel and try something new.

In terms of the things people believe are holding them back, the study found that fears surrounding money and a lack of planning are formidable barriers keeping people from taking risks and following their dreams. However, the good news is, despite these barriers, Americans also have a clear understanding that with proper planning they can be successful in a pursuit of a nontraditional life path. And the motivation is also clearly there as 93 percent of Americans agree that they need to start being more thoughtful as to how they plan for longer lives.

So what can you do now in order to take better advantage of these 30 extra years? The first step you can take is to change how you look at retirement planning. In fact, stop thinking of it as simply retirement planning. Rather, consider it as longevity planning – an opportunity to develop a strategy that recognizes the gift of time and allows for exploration and experimentation outside of traditional retirement years. Keep in mind, no one is saying cash out your 401(k) and hit the road. In fact, maintaining some traditional aspects of financial planning is always wise. However, it may be beneficial to take a step back and evaluate your short- and mid-term goals so that you have the opportunity to try something new. Perhaps you have always wanted to live overseas? Maybe even leave the corporate rat race and start your own business or work part-time to help take care of younger children? Thirty extra years is a lot of time to pursue your goals and there are no rules that say you need to wait until you are 65 to pursue them.

The good news is, planning for shorter-term goals can have a positive effect on your willingness and ability to save for later in life. After you determine how all of your goals fit into the larger picture, revisit your financial plans and assess what is necessary to make them happen. A financial professional can be a valuable resource in assisting with this type of planning.

The American dream as we know it is changing. We have a longer time frame to attain it and a better understanding of our how our increased longevity should play an important role in the planning process. With this gift of time, the time has never been better to embrace a nontraditional future.