Longevity As Australia’s Growth Engine—Led By Women

Australia’s Ageing Future

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Australia is on the cusp of a demographic revolution. Life expectancy now stretches well past 84, and the number of centenarians is set to triple by 2050. But while the country has cracked the code on long life, some say it is failing to adapt the infrastructure of lives to match. Retirement, healthcare, financial systems, and cultural narratives remain trapped in a past designed for 70-year lives. This mismatch is creating what’s being called Australia’s longevity paradox.

It is a paradox not because longevity is a problem, but because the longer we live, the more clearly we expose how ill-prepared our societies are to support the added years. And while the warnings have been sounded by many experts before, a new coalition in Australia of female-led initiatives is moving from lament to leadership. Together, they are reframing Australia’s longevity challenge as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for economic transformation, cultural renewal, and personal reinvention.

As Grey Matters’s Claire Canham argues in a recent Longevity Blueprint report, “This is not a crisis of ageing. It is a crisis of outdated thinking.”

A Talent and Market Opportunity

For too long, ageing has been framed as a burden. But new research suggests the opposite: longevity, if supported well, can become a productivity engine. The PrimeLife Partners report estimates that a mere 3% increase in workforce participation among Australians over 55 would add AU$33 billion annually to GDP.

Yet Australia continues to underperform on mature worker engagement. Labour force participation drops sharply after age 50, plunging to 61.3% by the early 60s. By contrast, top-performing countries like Sweden and New Zealand maintain participation above 77% for this age group.

Compounding the problem is the underemployment of older workers. Surveys show that over 70% of Australians over 55 want to keep working past the official retirement age. But rigid job structures, outdated assumptions, and systemic age bias push them to the sidelines. Hiring managers often consider workers ‘old’ by age 51. One in five HR professionals won’t hire anyone over 65. The result is a loss of experience, purpose, income, and productivity—not just for individuals, but for the country.

On the consumer side, PrimeLife notes ageing is not just about deficits—it’s about evolving markets and changing expectations. In this pillar, the authors, Dr. Abby Bloom and Anne-Marie Elias, highlight:

• The longevity economy in Australia is projected to expand from ~$60 billion in 2021–22 to over $110 billion by 2026–27.
• Future retirees (younger Boomers, Gen X) are more tech fluent, more demanding, and more diverse in tastes than past cohorts.
• They demand integrated, frictionless solutions—not “ageing as afterthought” products.
• The IoT/home automation market in Australia is forecast to reach ~$4.4 billion this year, presenting a template for how consumer tech intersects with ageing services.

The bottom line: a massive economic opportunity awaits companies who approach it with innovation and opportunity in mind.

The Women Driving a New Agenda

Three initiatives, all founded or led by women, are calling for a change of how Australia approaches its ageing society.

Claire Canham’s Grey Matters combines artificial intelligence with insights from behavioural science, positive psychology, and health data to create a personal longevity coach. The platform targets Australians over 45, helping them extend their healthspan, wealthspan, and workspan by integrating physical health, social connection, and financial resilience into one dashboard. Canham has assembled a world-class academic board, including Professor Mo Wang of the University of Florida, a leading global expert in ageing and career transitions; Professor Andres De Los Reyes, a psychologist specialising in mental health and social belonging; and Dr Juliet Bourke, an authority on inclusive leadership and behavioural change.

PrimeLife Partners, co-founded by Dr. Abby Bloom and Anne-Marie Elias, issued the Longevity 2030 report quoted above. PrimeLife Partners advises companies, governments, and NGOs on unlocking age-ready solutions. Their report zooms out from individual transitions to the broader ecosystem of policy, housing, healthcare, and business investment. They call for a redesign of how Australian society approaches longevity, from fiscal planning to advertising narratives.

Finally, Michele Lemmens submitted a detailed proposal to Australia’s Productivity Commission through the Longevity Productivity Lab (LPL). Her team argues that boosting participation of the 45+ workforce is essential for budget resilience, national productivity, and intergenerational equity. Her submission outlines not only the economic value of increased participation but also the structural reforms needed to unlock it—from tax incentives and job redesign to intergenerational workforce strategies.

As the LPL report puts it, “Australia’s mature workforce represents an under-leveraged asset capable of contributing significant value as workers, consumers, carers, community builders and taxpayers.”

These women and their initiatives are moving the country’s longevity conversation from alarm to action. They are creating practical tools, scalable platforms, and policy roadmaps that can steer Australia into a more resilient and thriving 100-year society.

Beyond Policy: Culture and Purpose

Policy is only one side of the coin. The deeper challenge is cultural. Ageism remains one of the most socially accepted forms of bias. Few corporate frameworks proactively and consciously include age. Media portrayals of older people alternate between the stereotypical and the invisible. Perhaps most dangerously, many older Australians underestimate their own longevity and fail to plan accordingly.

This is why these initiatives place such a strong emphasis on narrative shift and behavioural science. The Grey Matters platform doesn’t just track an individual’s biometric data; it builds emotional language and decision-making muscle around purpose, connection, and personal agency. Bourke’s work in leadership psychology underscores that thriving longer lives require not just a focus on healthspan and wealthspan but also meaning and contribution.

Juliet Bourke is co-authoring a book titled The Open Horizon exploring how retirement can be reimagined as a chapter of reinvention rather than retreat. Meanwhile, Grey Matters is designing indices of emotional wellbeing and social connection to sit alongside financial readiness as markers of ageing well.

The need is urgent. Loneliness and psychological distress in midlife are rising sharply. Women 55+ are the fastest-growing demographic facing homelessness in Australia. Social capital is fraying. And yet the new reports show how small shifts—in design, language, job roles and urban planning—can have outsized impact.

The Global Context

Other countries are moving faster say these change agents, and point to best practices they would like to see imported.

• Japan: re-employment mandates extending work opportunities to age 70.
• Singapore: introduced SkillsFuture with mid-career credits to support training well into the 50s and 60s
• Netherlands: pension ages have been linked to life expectancy, as have Denmark, Portugal, Sweden, and Italy (where the issue is currently being hotly debated).
• South Korea: senior employment programs are creating large-scale opportunities for older adults.
• Sweden: workplace adaptations and indexed pension age doubled 65–74 employment in 20 years.

Australia, by contrast, they say, has not yet mounted a coherent, cross-government strategy to address the demographic realities that are reshaping its economy and society. The Longevity Productivity Lab calls for a national taskforce on mature workforce engagement, with multi-sector stakeholders and implementation pilots. The aim is to create both urgency and coordination. Without such a structure, ideas risk dying in silos.

A New Model for Intergenerational Prosperity

The vision emerging from these initiatives is not about protecting the old from irrelevance. It’s about unleashing the untapped potential of an experienced, adaptable, and purpose-driven segment of the population. These are workers with skills, consumers with spending power, and community members with wisdom.

In economic terms, they represent the most immediate path to increasing national productivity without importing new labour. In social terms, they are the glue that can rebuild frayed connections across age groups and communities. And in personal terms, they are the ones who stand to benefit most from a culture that values contribution at every stage of life.

The Women Rewriting the Story

What makes the Australian longevity movement unique is that it is being driven by women—women redesigning systems that failed their own mothers, and that they know must change for the next generation.

They are building technology, influencing policy, and reshaping how we think about work, age, and contribution. As longevity extends our time on earth, the question becomes: how do we fill it meaningfully, sustainably, and inclusively? Australia has the talent, the data, and the tools. Now it has the leadership.

The only question is whether the rest of the country will listen—and follow these women towards future-proofing society and the economy in a new demographic era.