The Longevity Economy, Joseph Coughlin, PhD
The Not Old Better Show, Interview Series
Joseph F. Coughlin, PhD is founder and Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab. He teaches in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies & Planning and the Sloan School’s Advanced Management Program. Coughlin conducts research, speaks and consults on the impact of global demographic change and technology trends on consumer behavior, business innovation & public policy. He produces the online publication Disruptive Demographics. He is the author of The Longevity Economy: Inside the World’s Fastest Growing, Most Misunderstood Market, and is our guest today, via Skype, on The Not Old Better Show.
Coughlin provides deep insight into a population that consistently defies expectations: people who, through their continued personal and professional ambition, desire for experience, and quest for self-actualization, are building a striking, unheralded vision of longer life that very few in business fully understand. His focus on women — they outnumber men, control household spending and finances, and are leading the charge toward tomorrow’s creative new narrative of later life — is especially illuminating.
Coughlin pinpoints the gap between myth and reality and then shows businesses how to bridge it. As the demographics of global aging transform and accelerate, it is now critical to build a new understanding of the shifting physiological, cognitive, social, family, and psychological realities of the longevity economy.
