The past 50 years have brought a dramatic transformation in how we live our lives. The next half-century promises to keep up that pace. The once-reliable roadmap of education, a steady job, a foothold on the housing ladder and a clear path to retirement has been replaced by uncertainty that is playing out in our lives. We’ve entered an age of increasing complexity in our economic and social structures. Traditional certainties have unravelled and we find ourselves in a world where even fundamental milestones such as a singular career, buying a home or planning a future seem much less certain. That’s partly why we have the politics we have.
In this new landscape, the smooth arc of our lives is being redrawn as a series of peaks. The state’s age of retirement is creeping up, driven by the twin forces of longer life expectancies and the need to keep people economically active for longer. Simultaneously, the beginning of adulthood is stretching out like never before. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests that adolescence now extends into the mid-20s as those young adults fortunate enough to have stable homes stay under the protective umbrella of their parents for longer, partly out of emotional closeness but also because of the staggering financial barriers to independence. This further embeds disadvantages for those without the networks and resources that wealth and stability can bring.
