"We talk constantly about age-in politics, in leadership, in debates about retirement and the future of work. Yet we rarely stop to ask a simple question: What is age, exactly? Most of us rely on a single number, as if people were stamped with a vintage year like bottles of wine. But age is far from a fixed or universal metric. It is multidimensional, deeply unequal, and increasingly misleading when used as a shortcut for ability, potential, or readiness."
"Chronological age made sense in standardized industrial societies, where careers were linear, life expectancy was shorter, and work was more uniform. Today, it is a blunt instrument. As a predictor of health, performance, motivation, or longevity, it performs poorly. Two people of the same age can have radically different capacities and trajectories, shaped by education, income, working conditions, stress, and life events."
Age is often reduced to a single chronological number, yet age is multidimensional and varies across health, education, income, working conditions, and life events. Chronological age governed industrial-era norms like schooling, voting, and retirement, but today it poorly predicts health, performance, motivation, or longevity. Longer lifespans, career changes, and varied work conditions create widening age gaps within and between organizations. Employers that rely on chronological age for hiring, promotion, development, or exit risk unfair decisions and missed opportunities. Building fairer workplaces requires recognizing diverse aging trajectories and adapting policies to measure capacity and potential beyond years lived.
Read at Fast Company
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