Children today 'to work until 100'

When the state old age pension was first introduced it was intended to help families in looking after elderly grandparents, and life expectation was much shorter than today so many people would not live long enough to benefit, and those that did wouldn't, on average, last for many more years. But as people live longer they either need to have paid in more for their pension(s) - whether they are provided by the state, or through their employer(s), or privately - or they should face having to make do with a lower amount per year. The situation is also affected by the proportion of pension-receivers in relation to the working population. This varies over time. So there is no single age at which you should be entitled to stop earning. It's that age at which your contributions and/or savings are enough to support you for your average life-expectation thereafter, in the socio-economic context of your times. Will today's 11-year olds really last to the age of 120? It's true that people reaching their mid-nineties today cannot have expected to last this long back in about 1930, when they were ten or eleven. But will there be such a big increase in life-expectancy over the next 100 years to get most children to 120? I doubt it. To enjoy themselves at 110 or more they'll need to be a lot fitter than many 90-year-olds today, and that also seems doubtful. Most likely, if they've gone on working till 75, or 80, or 90, they'll be much more worn out by the time they feel they can retire and won't last many years longer. Which may be just as well, if you think about the huge number of new dwellings that would be needed to house all those additional people. Declaration of interest: I am 76.