The idea behind the longevity dividend was expressed in an article in The Scientist which argued that research should be directly targeted at slowing the aging process by seven years. As University of Illinois-Chicago demographer Jay Olshansky put it at the conference: It is a new paradigm for health promotion and disease prevention in the 21st century.

Olshansky argues that the old paradigm of directly targeting diseases is about to run out of steam. Even if all cancer, all heart disease and all diabetes were eliminated, it would add only 3 more years to average life expectancy in the United States. So if researchers want to achieve big gains in lifespan and healthspan they have to go after the aging process itself.

If you slow aging by seven years, you cut the risk of death at any age in half, and cut the risk everything else that goes wrong with the body in half too. The idea is not to make people older longer, but to make them younger longer.