Professor John Beard reflects on the societal shifts needed for humanity to capitalize on the healthspan dividend.
This week’s release of the second edition of the Global Healthspan Report by Hevolution Foundation marks a pivotal moment for field that is increasingly becoming a key topic of discussion at scientific, corporate and political levels. Built on global surveys, investment analysis, expert interviews and extensive research, the 2025 report shifts the conversation beyond defining healthspan to interrogating how far progress has truly advanced – and what must change to accelerate it.
Longevity.Technology: Among the key opinion leaders contributing to the Hevolution report was Columbia professor of productive aging John Beard, whose research focuses on the intersection of aging, healthspan and policy. With an emphasis on viewing health as the preservation of function rather than merely the absence of disease, Beard’s research is concentrated on the concepts of “intrinsic capacity” and “functional ability” over the life course. We caught up with him as part of the research for the report to explore his perspective on how society can benefit from the so-called “healthspan dividend.”
Having spent a decade leading the World Health Organization’s Ageing and Life Course program, Beard helped develop the WHO’s healthy aging framework, and suggests radical change is needed in how societies measure both human contribution and health itself.
“This isn’t something you can fix late in life,” he says. “Healthspan is shaped across the entire life course – biologically and socially.”
Challenging outdated stereotypes
Beard warns that rigid retirement structures, narrow economic models and widespread ageism are actively suppressing any potential healthspan dividend.
“A lot of the thinking of decision-makers is very primitive and often falls into two stereotypes,” he explains. “One is that older people are all a burden and that cutting benefits is the only way to avoid economic collapse. The other is that older people are all fit and healthy, living longer than ever and therefore should stay in the workforce – so those who do retire are seen as lazy.”
Beard says our society is rigidly stuck in these outdated and unhelpful age stereotypes, including the myth that there is a specific chronological age that defines when someone becomes “old” – something that has impacted him personally.
“I had to leave the WHO due to mandatory retirement at 63, despite being fully capable of working, and despite having a five-year-old child at the time,” he reveals.
According to Beard, these preconceptions around age shape how researchers frame questions, how economists think, how clinicians conduct research, and even how individuals think about themselves.
“If the stereotype says you retire at 63, you start questioning your own motives if you want to work longer,” he explains. “People who internalize negative age stereotypes actually experience seven years shorter healthy lifespans. So ageism affects society, research and individuals alike.”
“In reality, with increasing age we see increasing heterogeneity, especially in health. There are 80-year-olds as fit as 20-year-olds, and 50- and 60-year-olds who already require care. Life is a continuum. If that’s the case, what we should be trying to do is shift the whole continuum to the right – so people live longer and healthier.”
Older people still contribute to the economy
From an economics perspective, Beard says there are a host of myths around aging and healthspan that also need to be dispelled, including the idea that population aging will crush health systems.
“The most expensive period in healthcare is typically the last 18 months of life – not old age itself,” says Beard. “As people live longer, the number of people in that last 18-month window does not rise proportionally. Of course, if pension systems are rigidly based on chronological age, yes, pressure increases. But look at Germany: it already has universal pensions, universal healthcare and mandatory long-term care insurance, and its GDP growth per person since 2000 has been similar to the United States. These fears are largely myths sustained by outdated structures.”
According to Beard, society needs to take a much more nuanced approach to aging that values the contributions older people make.
“Unfortunately, most economists tend not to account for those contributions beyond workforce participation,” he says. “Older people contribute financially, through caregiving, volunteering and many other ways. We need better data and better interpretation of that data feeding into policymaking.”
“Because we lack that nuance, we also tend to treat everyone over a certain chronological age as the same, and we create generic policies based on that stereotype. That works for only about 5% of the population and fails the rest – so at the moment, we’re doing pretty poorly.”
Beard also highlights the fact that higher socioeconomic status consistently predicts better healthspan at both national and individual levels.
“Both absolute and relative inequality matter – large gaps between rich and poor create chronic stress and biological impacts that carry through life,” he says. “Because socioeconomic status shapes healthspan, those with the poorest health in older age often have the least access to resources. We need to reduce disadvantage across the life course – and also target support toward those at the bottom in older age.”
How society must adapt
As governments grapple with demographic change, Beard argues that the real risk is not population aging, but failing to modernize the systems built around it.
“First, we need to start measuring the real contributions people make at all ages, not just estimating them based on outdated assumptions,” he says. “Many self-funded retirees still pay tax, provide caregiving, volunteer and, in some cases, stay in the workforce. We need to capture all of that.”
“Second, we need to understand how health impacts those contributions. A common idea is that pension age should rise with life expectancy, but that assumes health is improving at the same rate. If people live longer but remain unhealthy, that logic fails. Right now, health is mostly understood as the presence or absence of disease, which doesn’t tell us what we actually need to know.”
When it comes to the biggest barriers stopping governments from acting on healthspan, Beard says too much focus remains on biology without linking it clearly to society and economics.
“Economists need to be more deeply integrated into these discussions, and they need better tools to make the case,” he adds. “Ultimately, politicians and senior officials hold the same entrenched stereotypes as the rest of society. Changing those mindsets takes time and sustained argument.”
However, argues Beard, the longevity field first needs to get its own house in order when it comes to healthspan.
“We’re still not clear enough on what healthspan actually is,” he says. “If a politician hears fragmented messages from different geroscientists focused on narrow biological mechanisms, it sounds like self-interest rather than a coherent agenda. We live in an echo chamber. Terms like ‘senescent cells’ or even ‘stem cells’ mean nothing outside it. We need to communicate in a clearer, more unified way.”
“Health is complex – it’s about adaptation, tipping points and systems, not simple linear cause-and-effect. Complexity makes policy change harder, but the basic economics is simple: if you marginalize people based on age, both society and the economy suffer.”
“If we build abilities across the life course and maintain health, longer lives are a miracle for society. Problems arise only when lifespan increases without healthspan. Compression of morbidity won’t happen by chance – we need deliberate, life-course investments. Those investments will yield major socioeconomic returns.”
