UK Edition
Increased life expectancy should mark end of ''til death do us part' marriage vows
Marriage vows may need to be rewritten to omit 'till death do us part because people are living so long that couples may not want to be together for life, a leading ageing expert has warned.
Sarah Harper, Professor of Gerontology at Oxford University, said that the increase in life expectancy, coupled with scientific and medical advances, would see people not dying before 120 or 130.
Current general life expectancy is rising two and a half years per decade, or 15 minutes and hour, she told The Hay Festival, meaning every day the average person in Britain adds six hours to their lifespan.
But she said the huge increase in longevity would bring challenges for marriage because partners who were previously wed for a few decades could find themselves hitched for a century.
"The 21st century is going to see a dramatic increase in life expectancy, not only of individuals but of the whole population. We need to reevaluate ageing and take on board what these very very long lives will mean," said Prof Harper, a married mother of three, told the Hay audience.
"The historian Michael Anderson has pointed out that in our country, as widowhood started to the decline as the main cause for the break up of marriage so divorce started to increase and in fact they mirror each other.
"One of the arguments he makes at the end of his paper is maybe we have to look, with these very very long lives, whether we do want to be together for 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 years.
"So even the institution of marriage I think we've got to look at. We've pushed back death considerably."
Recent figures from the Office for National Statistics forecast that half all the babies born in the UK today will live till 104.
But the gains in longevity are causing severe problems for society because many people will see retirement last far longer than their working lives, placing a huge burden on pensions and completely altering the definition of 'old age', Prof Harper said.
In the 1970s, European men had an average of 10 years of life left after they retired, but at the turn of the millennium, that had risen to 22 years.
"What a crazy situation we have got ourselves into," said Prof Harper, who is also Director of the Oxford Institute of Ageing. "This period when we stop working is nothing to do with biology anymore, it is socially constructed.
"If we look at when Beveridge introduced the old age pension, he chose 65, and at that age half of manual male workers were dead before 70.
"He did not introduce a pension to support us in a very very long retirement, what he was doing was social welfare. Men retired from work when they could work no longer.
"It's probable that we are heading to a world where people are living to 120-130. What happens when you don't inherit from your grandparents until your 80?"
Speaking about current gains in life expectancy, she said: "I don't know if any of you are aware how many years you are gaining.
"At the moment the general life expectancy we're talking about two and a half years per decade, or 15 minutes and hour, so if you sit here for an hour you have 15 minutes extra life to go and spend in the bar, or wherever you would like to."
Prof Harper is the author of How Population Change Will Transform Our World.