Helsinki-Conference on Gerontechnology

Twice as many years as our ancestors: and the concept of a life plan

Keynote address by Arthur E. Imhof


To put the increasing amount of leisure time on top corresponds better to the concept of a life plan: i.e. investing free time not only in bodily activities and pleasures, but from a young age on also in intellectual and cultural activities. Even towards the end of a long life, when bodily capacities often wane earlier than intellectual ones - if trained lifelong -, life should be worthwhile. Remember the alarming suicide distribution with a sharp increase in the relative numbers in the highest age groups, as observed in the GDR 1961, 1977, 1984, and 1989. This need not be so.

Source: CD-ROM Historical Demography (1995), Fig. 95.