Your grandchildren may need a 75-year mortgage…
... if Shripad Tuljapurkar of Stanford University is right. He thinks that by 2050 the retirement age may have to be raised to 85 and that 50 or 75 year mortgages will be being offered. He expects life-expectancy to rise by one year each year between 2010 and 2030. (This view clashes that held by other experts, who warn that life expectancy may drop by several years due to the health problems that people in the industrialised nations have developed – too many calories and too few vegetables and fruit causing obesity, diabetes and other “civilization diseases”). Frankly, the prospect of working for around 40-45 years doesn’t thrill me with joy today – the thought of working for 65 years makes me think maybe the present isn’t such a bad time to be alive.