Introduction 5 



These changes in hfe expectancy will have, and already are 

 having, a tremendous impact on problems connected with care of 

 the aged. The social security program must carefully weigh 

 these factors. We now have two chances out of three that an 

 eighteen-year old will live to the retirement age of sixtv-five. A 

 forty-five-year-old man has seventy chances in one hundred of 

 reaching sLxty-five. Projecting our tables to 1980, about one person 

 in ten will be sixty-five years of age or older, as compared with one 

 person in twenty-five back in 1900. Some insurance companies 

 have already adjusted premiums downward on straight life in- 

 surance policies as a reflection of this trend toward long life. We 

 have not reached the end of possible means for increasing the span 

 of human life, and before too many decades slip by, it seems fair 

 to assume that the three score years and ten figure will be readily 

 surpassed. 



