The Longevity Preparedness Index: Measuring What It Takes to Live Longer, Better

For decades, the story of retirement planning has been framed by two bookends, health and wealth.

Not incorrect, just incomplete. Both are essential. But between those two bookends lies complexity, and far more human behaviors: the countless daily routines, choices, and assumptions that make up life itself.

I’m proud to share that the MIT AgeLab, in collaboration with our friends at John Hancock, has developed and released the Longevity Preparedness Index (LPI). The LPI is a first-of-its-kind multidomain national measure that redefines what it means to be ready for life tomorrow.

The LPI doesn’t just ask whether Americans are healthy or financially secure. It asks a variety of questions that are as varied as life itself, such as, have you considered and put into place:

• Where you will live?
• Who will you spend time with?
• How will you get around, find care, stay connected, and navigate change?

In short, it measures how prepared we are to live well across the many chapters between health and wealth.

A New Lens on Longevity

Built upon years of AgeLab research, conversations with global experts, and extensive literature reviews, and tested with more than 1,300 U.S. adults, the LPI examines preparedness across eight critical domains: health, finance, care, home, daily activities, social connection, community, and life transitions.

The inaugural results are more than a little sobering. If this were a quiz, America scored a “D” overall, with the lowest marks in care, home, and health. Yet even in that troubling finding lies the opportunity to begin a new national conversation, a new longevity literacy, and perhaps even a race, toward greater preparedness.

Preparedness, as we define it, is not a checklist or a hope. It is an active process of awareness, assessment, and action:

• Awareness of what lies ahead in older age,
• Assessment of how realistic our assumptions are, and
• Action to put systems, supports, and social networks in place before we need them.

Planning alone, after all, is about intent, a grocery store shopping list of sorts. We all know that a shopping list alone, even with a robust checkbook, does not put food on our table. Preparedness, instead, is about action and execution.

Setting a New Agenda for Living Longer, Better

This is not a one-and-done project. The LPI is a foundational framework and tool that will grow with future data, cross-national insights, tracking progress over time and across generations. Our goal is to establish not just a national benchmark, but a new mindset. A new framing for families, industry leaders, and policymakers that blends individual readiness with broader quintessential MIT systems thinking needed to support living a longer, better life.

Already, the data tell a compelling story:

• Women are outpacing men in most domains of longevity preparedness, particularly in care and social connection.
• Caregiving experience makes a measurable difference in readiness. Caregivers score higher than non-caregivers.
• And while financial preparedness remains central, the everyday infrastructure of life, relationships, housing, activities, and community are equally critical to well-being in older age.

These findings signal that longevity planning must evolve from an individual and family financial exercise alone into a societal preparedness challenge.

Innovation Is A Team Sport

The LPI would not have been possible without the incredible talent, creativity, and commitment of my amazing MIT AgeLab research team, whose years of work laid the foundation for this Index and for so much of what we know about longevity today.

My deep thanks to Brooks Tingle, President and CEO of John Hancock, Lindsay Hanson, Chief Marketing Officer, and the many people that make up their exceptional, spirited team. Their support for a more holistic future of longevity planning made this possible.

Together, we’ve created a new tool, and perhaps more importantly, a new way of thinking about how we prepare for the years ahead.

The MIT AgeLab will build on this foundational work and apply the insights to our research on the future of advice and longevity planning, but we will also leverage it to better understand how we might drive innovation in other industries and policy areas to improve the lives of both older adults and the people who care for them.

A New Conversation For Old Age

The Longevity Preparedness Index is not simply about measurement; it’s about momentum toward a new way of thinking about longevity. It’s an invitation to families, industries, employers, and policymakers to rethink what it means to live well in an era of unprecedented longevity.

Yes, we all need health. Yes, we all need wealth.

But to thrive across what might be 8,000 days-plus of retirement, we also need to be ready for the practical, the social, and even the mundane, where to live, what to do, and who to do it with.

The Longevity Preparedness Index is a start and a promise: to inform and move all of us from planning for an uncertain and ambiguous future to anticipating and preparing for more years of life lived well.