There are some intriguing demographic changes coming down the road in terms of longevity which government policymakers - and Financial Planners - will have to take on board.

Planning for old age could well get a lot more complicated.

These changes affect everything, including annuity rates, State Pension planning and retirement planning generally.

One of the most interesting changes, as we reported this week, is the rapid rise in people aged 90 and over and particularly the rise in centenarians.

According to the latest ONS study, the number of centenarians in England and Wales (people aged 100 and over) increased by a whopping 22% to 15,300 in 2024 compared to a decade earlier (2014: 12,600).

Given this, it’s perhaps not too much of a surprise that the world’s oldest woman, Ethel Caterham, who was born in 1909 and is 116, is British. She lives in a very nice care home in Surrey and is also believed to be the world’s oldest survivor of Covid which she caught at the age of 110.

This is something to be celebrated. She’s had an incredible life - you can read about her on several national titles - and despite being widowed 50 years ago still enjoys seeing her family and friends.

While her life story is certainly not typical of all British pensioners, many of whom suffer poor living standards in retirement, we should be rightly proud of the care that Ethel receives and what it says about the way many older people are looked after in this country. For many people older life is comfortable and content. That's the mark of a civilised and caring society.

Ethel is not alone either as several other British women have reach ripe ages and become world record holders.

According to the ONS data the number of women continues to outnumber men when it comes to reaching 100 years of age. For every man aged 100 and over, there were 4.4 women.

ONS data also reveals that there were over half a million (564,000) people aged 90 and or over in England and Wales in mid-2024 and twice as many were women as men. In fact the population aged 90 years and over has increased by 2.1% since mid-2023.

For us chaps the positive news is that rising life expectancy for men has been a large contributor to the growth, with the number of 90 years old and older men growing 33.2% since 2014.

Assuming these trends continue (and that’s always a dangerous assumption as Covid proved), there will be a lot more very old people in future and they will need looking after and funds to support their lifestyles and care.

The interesting factor is that this growth in the very old population has come at a time when lifespan growth in the general population has been stalling, if not falling.

According to an ONS study in 2024 life expectancy at birth in the UK in 2020 to 2022 was 78.6 years for males and 82.6 years for females. Compared with 2017 to 2019, life expectancy fell by 38 weeks (over 6 months) for males and by 23 weeks (nearly 4 months) for females.

The ONS said in 2024: “Life expectancy improvements have been slow for the last decade, and the latest estimates of life expectancy at birth are back to the same level as 2010 to 2012 for females and slightly below the 2010 to 2012 level for males.”

Of course, Covid was a huge factor in these figures but it’s worth noting that, at the very least, lifespan improvements in the UK post the Second World War have stalling for several years.

All of this makes forecasting future costs extremely hard and this may well be something Chancellor Rachel Reeves turns to in her forthcoming Budget on 26 November: how do ensure older people are comfortable and well looked after into advanced old age but ensure that younger retirees are properly looked after and that the population generally does not face a huge burden paying for all this?

It’s a challenge and there are no simple answers but fairness across the generations must be paramount.

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Kevin O’Donnell is editor of Financial Planning Today and a journalist with 40 years of experience. This topical comment on the Financial Planning news appears most weeks, usually on Fridays but occasionally other days.  Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Follow @FPT_Kevin 

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