Italian
On July 3rd and 4th, twenty-one international experts will meet at the Giorgio Cini Foundation to analyze the reasons, critical implications, and identify possible responses.
Longevity is one of the most important issues that contemporary societies are facing at all levels. Life expectancy is not the same for everyone. It is unequal both between countries and within them: wealthier and more educated groups live longer and in better conditions compared to those less affluent. New medical technologies – such as personalized therapies – risk exacerbating these disparities, significantly improving the lives of those who can access them while leaving others behind. An increasingly longer average life also tests the very definition of equity on which pension, health, and welfare systems are based.
These are the topics that will be addressed at the international conference Inequalities in Longevity. Determining Factors, Fragility, and Responses to an Underestimated Challenge, scheduled for July 3 and 4, 2026, which brings together twenty-one demographers, doctors, economists, sociologists, and public policy experts.
Explains Daniele Franco, Scientific Director of the Foundation, creator and curator of the initiative: «The increase in life expectancy represents a crucial challenge for our societies, it is a success of science and the economy, it is a source of great opportunities but it can also be potentially divisive if not approached with critical spirit and awareness of the demographic, social, cultural, ethical, and economic implications. The effects of a longer life are multiple and still not fully understood. Exploring them requires scientific rigor and openness to dialogue: it is with this spirit that the Foundation intends to provide solid foundations for the debate and greater awareness to the broader public».
The conference
The conference can be followed live streaming on the Foundation’s YouTube channel (here is the link) and will be divided into three sessions.
Attached is the detailed program.
Session 1 — At the Root of Inequalities. The first session will discuss the factors that determine inequalities in life expectancy. Among the most current topics are the role of income and healthcare services, particularly prevention; the different vulnerability to the effects of climate change on health and mortality, the digital disparities among the elderly related to algorithms and artificial intelligence, and the relationship between “growth without employment” and new forms of inequality in longevity.
Session 2 — The Multiple Dimensions of Fragility. The afternoon session focuses on the individual and the medical, economic, and social aspects of vulnerability in old age: the “unlived years,” namely fragility, social isolation, and dependency; how poverty in old age builds up throughout life and the margins for active and healthy aging; the effects of ageism in the workplace; field strategies to combat elderly poverty. The common thread is rethinking equity and the intergenerational pact in aging societies, to “change the ending of the story” and age well in a more equitable way.
Session 3 — Policies to Address Inequalities. The final session is dedicated to the responses to be provided, with a strong focus on pension systems: inequalities in pension coverage; whether and to what extent it is appropriate to consider differences in life expectancy in the design of public pensions; the long-term effects of social policies; the role of human capital for productivity and growth in the age of AI. A synthesis perspective proposes a life-cycle approach to enhance well-being and reduce disparities.
Longevity, a thematic journey
The conference is part of the program of scientific and cultural initiatives that the Giorgio Cini Foundation is dedicating to the theme of “longevity” throughout 2026.
Continuing a long tradition of international meetings, the Foundation has launched a series of high-level conferences and symposia in recent years on topics that profoundly mark the present: in 2024 on Global Health in the Age of AI and in 2025 onDemocracy and Pandemics.
The meeting on July 3-4 is the first of a double chapter of discussion and reflection.
An international conference, Humankind and Longevity is scheduled from November 19 to 21: three days with over forty speakers from various disciplines, dedicated to the scientific dimension of longevity, economics, politics and international relations, and finally the anthropological, cultural and ethical dimension of living, aging, and dying.
The Foundation is also producing a podcast, which will be released in October, featuring a politician, an entrepreneur, a writer, a philosopher of science, a theologian, and a scientist. Additionally, in the fall, there will be a meeting that addresses the spiritual, religious, and moral aspects of an extended life. Until the end of the year, the constellation of conferences, seminars, and concerts promoted by the Institutes and Centers of the Foundation continues.
