Andrew-Scott-WIP

The economic impact of COVID-19 on an aging society

A conversation with Andrew Scott, economics professor, London Business School & author of The 100 Year Life
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“COVID-19 has accelerated our arrival into the future. some of that is around technology and how we’re living and working, but also it is about an aging society.”

Andrew Scott is a leading authority on the economics around longevity, an economics professor at the London Business School, and co-author, with Lynda Gratton, of the global bestseller The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in the Age of Longevity. He joins me from London for this episode of the Work in Progress podcast.

“This is the first pandemic we’ve had when the population of people aged over 65 exceeds those under five, and that has fundamentally changed the way we have to deal with COVID,” Scott tells me.

“It justifies, for instance, a much greater lock down. Because if there are a lot more people over the age of 65, given the risk characteristics of COVID, there are more lives at risk so we have to shut down the economy more.”

Scott says COVID-19 has made us finally start the dialogue we’ve needed to have about “rethinking age, rethinking ‘old’, recognizing that not everyone old is ill”. But he adds, he fears “the impact on everyone’s finances will be greater than any impact on life expectancy, which means people are going to have to work for longer.”

“We have this huge unemployment and we know that there’s age discrimination in hiring. The trouble, of course, is if you’re 50 plus, you haven’t got a lot of time to repair that damage.”

Scott goes on to talk about the challenge governments have in balancing a healthy economy and a healthy population when we have so many older people. You can listen to the full podcast here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And be on the lookout for Scott’s and Gratton’s newest book, The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World. It examines jobs, careers, education, finances, and relationships, and is intended to start a debate on how we support an aging society. It’s out May 28 in the U.K. and later this summer in the United States.

Episode 135: Andrew Scott, London Business School economics professor, author of The 100 Year Life
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.