Today’s youth have a 50% chance of living to age 104. What does that mean for the economy?

But going from a country where the average life expectancy sits at about 77.3 years to one where half live to 104 will take an enormous structural shift in America’s way of life, from the healthcare system to the corporate world.

That’s according to AARP CEO Michelle Seitz who spoke at Coins2Day’s Most Powerful Women Summit on Wednesday. Citing research from her nonprofit that advocates on behalf of those 50 and over, Seize notes that 10-year-olds today have a 50% chance of living to 104 assuming they take good care of themselves.

As people live longer however, they may marry later, have children later (singer Janet Jackson famously gave birth to a son at 50-years-old), and go through many more careers than those of generations past. Already, life expectancy has been rising steadily around the world in past centuries due to increased access to nutrition and healthcare.

“If you’re living to 104, how would you change your life course? Would you get married at 22, find a job, and plan for retirement at 65? No one is doing that anymore,” says Seitz. “Our parent’s generation and my generation would go to work and stay at a place for 25 to 30 years. Nowadays, people are having three to four totally different careers and they probably aren’t going to need college education in all of those. So we are going to have to reevaluate how we educate our families and how we think about sabbaticals.”

Retirement

The original Social Security Act of 1935 set a norm for retiring at around 65. But as the human lifespan has continued to grow, that norm now seems outdated—exacerbating existing concerns about the country’s retirement gap: The amount an individual needs to save up to retire at a certain age, and the amount they actually have.

“We often talk about the retirement gap. It’s a cliff. It’s a total double diamond cliff,” says Russell Investment Chief Financial Officer Jill Timm. “Most people have no hope of being able to maintain even 80% of their existing lifestyle in the current fashion.”

While part of this gap is due to a mix of issues including student loans and a lack of stock market investments, part of the cause stems from a generational shift: There are not enough people entering the workforce to pay taxes and offset a bevy of retiring boomers. Social Security trust funds for example are expected to dry up, with benefits cut by about 20% by about 2033 due to that problem. 

Retiring later than 65 will have to be a part of the aging new reality, per Timms. “We can’t afford to have a quarter of the society not productively engaged in society,” she says.

The coronavirus however has also set back the country’s life expectancy trendline: That figure fell by a year and a half to 77.3 years, the lowest level since 2003, according to the CDC.

While living to 104 is may certainly give people more time with loved ones—it comes with serious shockwaves for our current expectations about how to spend our golden years.