Sunday, January 06, 2008

Longevity concerns

The Economist brings us up to scratch on Abolishing Ageing, highlighting those areas of medicine which directly address ageing itself. For obvious reasons, this is an area of science that the retirement industry needs to watch closely, even though the current trend towards widespread obesity would not suggest that the most immediately promising approach of caloric restriction could win a popularity contest. But it could, once the side effects of caloric restriction (i.e. near starvation) are removed. Even so, the UK industry prepares for even higher longevity - some mortality tables expecting the average 65-year-old to live to 100 and beyond by 2050. 

It is therefore apprpriate that the finance industry provides tradable longevity indices, such as Goldman Sachs' QxX family, or JPMorgan's Lifemetrics toolkit. Credit Suisse's Longevity Index does not appear to be directly accessible on the web. 

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