Andrew Scott
Most organisations have stress-tested their strategy against geopolitical risk and AI disruption. Few have asked the same question about longevity. The shift to longer lives is already restructuring labour supply, consumer behaviour, healthcare costs, and fiscal policy, simultaneously. Boards that treat demographic change as a background condition, rather than a structural economic force, are calibrating long-term strategy around assumptions that have already been invalidated.
Longevity is restructuring careers, labour markets, and fiscal systems faster than most long-term strategies account for. Andrew Scott CBE, Professor of Economics at London Business School and Principal Scientist (Economics) at the Ellison Institute of Technology Oxford, helps organisations and governments identify where their current assumptions are already wrong.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Andrew Scott
- His published distinction between an “ageing society” and a “longevity society”, developed in The Lancet Healthy Longevity and across his books, gives leadership teams a concrete alternative to deficit-focused demographic thinking, with direct implications for workforce design, business model adaptation, and long-term investment.
- His two books, The 100-Year Life (over one million copies sold) and The Longevity Imperative (2024, shortlisted for the FT–Schroders Business Book of the Year), translate macroeconomic and health research into specific decisions organisations face: how to structure careers, what skills to invest in, how to redesign pension and benefits frameworks.
- His academic research, including a paper in Nature Aging co-authored with David Sinclair and Martin Ellison, connects macro-economic strategy to the science of ageing itself, giving organisations a basis for anticipating how advances in health and geroscience will affect labour supply and workforce composition over the next two decades.
- As leader of the CEPR Research Policy Network on the Economics of Longevity and Ageing, he has an overall view of policy, academic research, and applied economic intelligence: not a commentator on the trend, but one of the people who defines the research agenda.
- His advisory roles at the UK Office for Budget Responsibility, and his prior work with HM Treasury and the Bank of England, mean he can brief boards on the regulatory and fiscal changes that longevity economics will drive – before those changes arrive on the agenda.
Biography highlights
- Professor of Economics at London Business School; Principal Scientist (Economics) at the Ellison Institute of Technology, Oxford
- CBE, 2026 New Year’s Honours – for services to economics, research and public discourse
- Co-author of The 100-Year Life (with Lynda Gratton) – over one million copies sold; runner-up for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
- Author of The Longevity Imperative (2024) – shortlisted for the FT–Schroders Business Book of the Year; named one of the FT’s best summer economics reads
- Research Fellow, Centre for Economic Policy Research; leads the CEPR Research Policy Network on the Economics of Longevity and Ageing; member of the WEF Global Future Council on Healthy Ageing and Longevity
- Former Non-Executive Director, UK Financial Services Authority; former Managing Editor, Royal Economic Society’s Economic Journal; advisory board member, UK Office for Budget Responsibility; adviser to HM Treasury and the Bank of England
Biography
The 100-Year Life, co-authored by Andrew Scott and Lynda Gratton, has sold over a million copies. What made it resonate was not the data on life expectancy; it was the argument that longer lives require a fundamentally different structure for careers, organisations, and economic systems. That argument sits at the centre of Scott’s research at London Business School and the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford.
Scott’s central distinction – between an “ageing society” and a “longevity society” – reframes longevity from a background risk into a strategic imperative. An ageing society focuses on supporting rising numbers of older people. The longevity society, as Scott defines it in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, demands that organisations prepare for fifty-year careers, not just older employees. The implication for workforce strategy, benefits design, and long-term investment is structural, not cosmetic.
The Longevity Imperative (2024, shortlisted for the FT–Schroders Business Book of the Year) extends the analysis from individual careers into system-level change: health systems, fiscal policy, financial markets. Academic research published in Nature Aging with David Sinclair and Martin Ellison grounds this macro-economic framing in the science of ageing itself – connecting what medical advances mean for labour supply to decisions boards face today.
Scott advises the UK Office for Budget Responsibility and has previously advised HM Treasury and the Bank of England. He co-founded The Longevity Forum and serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Healthy Ageing and Longevity. In 2026, he was appointed CBE for services to economics, research and public discourse.
Key speaking topics
- Economics of longevity
- Demographic change and long-term economic growth
- Multigenerational workforce design
- Career reinvention and the 50-year working life
- Health, ageing, and the economics of prevention
- Fiscal sustainability and pension system reform
- AI, technology, and demographic change
- Business strategy and long-run demographic risk
Ideal for
- CHROs and heads of people strategy at large, multigenerational organisations navigating career architecture and workforce planning for longer working lives
- Boards and senior leadership teams integrating demographic risk into long-term strategy alongside AI and geopolitical disruption
- Financial services leaders – asset managers, pension funds, insurers – whose business models are directly shaped by the structural economics of ageing populations
- Policymakers and public sector leaders with responsibility for labour market, health, or fiscal policy
Audience outcomes
- A concrete framework – the ageing society vs longevity society distinction – for identifying where current workforce and business strategies are misaligned with demographic reality
- Clarity on the three-dimensional longevity dividend: what it means in practice to build for lives that are longer, healthier, and economically productive
- Specific implications for pension design, benefit frameworks, talent investment, and career architecture – not trend-watching, but decision-relevant analysis
- An evidence-based view of how advances in geroscience and health technology are likely to affect labour supply and workforce composition over the next two decades
- A new strategic vocabulary for the board conversation on longevity – one that moves from “ageing burden” to a concrete set of opportunities and organisational decisions
Talks
This talk makes the case for moving from an ageing society narrative – focused on managing more older people – to a longevity society agenda that treats longer lives as one of the defining strategic opportunities of the 21st century.
Key takeaways:
- Why the “ageing society” narrative misdirects organisational strategy, investment decisions, and policy – and what the “longevity society” framing changes
- The three-dimensional longevity dividend: how longer lives must also be healthier and more economically productive, and what that requires of organisations and governments
- The specific structural changes – in workforce design, health systems, financial markets, and career architecture – that the longevity imperative demands