With longevity back in the news again, Stephen Lowe says the strength of professional advice is it looks beyond mere averages in order to treat people as individuals - but where does that leave mass-market retirees?
Humans' fascination with our own mortality means life expectancy research often makes it into the news. There seems to be a perpetual see-sawing between scientific advances that are set to deliver longer lives and extravagant lifestyles that are cutting them short. Averages carried in the news pages are interesting from a wider policy point of view although meaningless at an individual level. Typically they are ‘period' figures that look backwards and assume no future gains rather than ‘cohort' figures that assume the improving trend of the last century still has some legs. They need car...
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