MARSH & MCLENNAN COMPANIES MEDIA CONTACT:
Jeremy Lehrman, Marsh & McLennan Companies +1 212 345 9775 [email protected]

STANFORD CENTER ON LONGEVITY MEDIA CONTACT:
Margaret Dyer-Chamberlain, Stanford Center on Longevity +1 650 736 9085 [email protected]

NEW YORK, August 30, 2012 — Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc. (NYSE: MMC), a global professional services firm providing advice and solutions in risk, strategy and human capital, and the Stanford Center on Longevity, a research center at Stanford University, today announced that the two organizations will collaborate to raise awareness and preparedness around lifetime financial security. As part of its previously announced commitment to fund retirement policy exploration, Marsh & McLennan Companies will contribute $1.5 million through 2013 to support the Stanford Center on Longevity’s studies and activities related to financial security.

“Marsh & McLennan Companies is eager to advance awareness and education around issues related to retirement and aging populations. Two aspects of those issues—increased longevity and financial security—are top of mind for governments, businesses and individuals,” said Brian Duperreault, President and CEO of Marsh & McLennan Companies. “Through our Company’s support of the Stanford Center on Longevity, we will take part in forward-looking dialogue on these issues and work to be a catalyst for new ideas and perspectives that benefit the greater good of the aging population and of future generations,” Mr. Duperreault concluded.

“It is a privilege for the Stanford Center on Longevity to receive this support for our programs from Marsh & McLennan Companies,” said Laura Carstensen, Founding Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. “Our Center aims to connect with the best thinkers, business leaders and policy makers, and we look forward to the insights Marsh & McLennan Companies will provide based on its deep expertise in risk, strategy and human capital.”

Michele Burns, who previously served as Chairman and CEO of Mercer, a subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies, and was named to lead Marsh & McLennan Companies’ retirement policy center exploration last year, will serve as Center Fellow and Strategic Advisor to the Stanford Center on Longevity. She will join Founding Director Laura Carstensen, PhD and Deputy Director Thomas Rando, MD, PhD in providing strategic guidance for the overall efforts of the Center and development of the Financial Security Division of the Center.

“In exploring how Marsh & McLennan Companies could have the greatest impact in the retirement policy arena, the Stanford Center on Longevity emerged as an excellent partner,” said Michele Burns. “The Center brings a unique perspective to issues facing our society by rethinking the perceived problems around an aging population—challenges such as retirement planning and the need to work longer—and finding value in the opportunities these challenges present.

“The Center’s Financial Security Division, in collaboration with Marsh & McLennan Companies, will examine these issues from multiple perspectives, ranging from individual financial capability, the changing nature and role of work, common financial pitfalls such as fraud, and the resulting key policy issues. The goal is to help drive the dialogue forward in order to facilitate a healthier state of long-term financial security—both for the individual and society. I am very proud to work with the Stanford Center on Longevity on these issues and to contribute to solutions that can make a difference for us all,” Ms. Burns concluded.

The two organizations recently collaborated on a conference that brought together contributors from business, academia and government to address retirement planning in the age of longevity. The insights discussed at the conference are being used to inform the Stanford Center on Longevity’s financial security agenda as well as recommendations for future policy and research. The Center’s Financial Security Division will also launch an expanded web presence this fall that will highlight the Division’s work and will also serve as an information resource for key stakeholders.

• To learn more about the Center’s Financial Security Division, visit https://longevity.stanford.edu/blog/2012/06/a-collaboration-on-financial-security/.

About Marsh & McLennan Companies

MARSH & McLENNAN COMPANIES (NYSE: MMC) is a global team of professional services companies offering clients advice and solutions in the areas of risk, strategy and human capital. Marsh is a global leader in insurance broking and risk management; Guy Carpenter is a global leader in providing risk and reinsurance intermediary services; Mercer is a global leader in human resource consulting and related services; and Oliver Wyman is a global leader in management consulting. Marsh & McLennan Companies’ 53,000 colleagues worldwide provide analysis, advice and transactional capabilities to clients in more than 100 countries. The Company prides itself on being a responsible corporate citizen and making a positive impact in the communities in which it operates. Visit www.mmc.com for more information.

About the Stanford Center on Longevity

The mission of the Stanford Center on Longevity (https://longevity.stanford.edu/) is to redesign long life. The Center studies the nature and development of the human life span, looking for innovative ways to use science and technology to solve the problems of people over 50 and improve the well-being of people of all ages. Meeting these challenges includes changing public policies as well as personal behavior. Redesigning long life means appreciating the unique challenges of aging, as well as the great value older people contribute to a society.

The Center brings together experts from academia, business and government to target important challenges and opportunities for older people. It works to make sure that research findings are not shared only in scholarly journals, but reach policymakers, business leaders, and others who will use them to improve our society.

Nearly 140 Stanford faculty members are Center affiliates. Their research ranges from developing healthy nutritional habits and building assistive robots, to pursuing stem cell research and improving health care delivery. The Center’s research projects are designed to provide information to policymakers and business leaders, and bring them together with the research community. By fostering dialogue among these typically disconnected worlds, the Center aims to develop workable solutions to urgent issues confronting America as our population ages.

The Stanford Center on Longevity, which studies the nature and development of the entire human life span, will examine the possibility of using music to improve memory in older adults.

The Center on Longevity, along with the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, has been selected to receive a Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa) grant to convene an interdisciplinary conference in Fall 2010 to establish a collaborative research agenda.

Virtually everyone experiences memory decline with age. Alzheimer’s disease and clinical dementia are the most severe forms of this decline, although subtler versions of decline also come with age, including poorer recall and degraded working memory. But the relationship between music, memory and aging has received relatively little attention.

The Center on Longevity looks for innovative ways to use science and technology to solve the problems of people over 50 and improve the well-being of people of all ages. Laura L. Carstensen PhD, director of the Center on Longevity, and Jonathan Berger, CCRMA co-director and professor of music, will lead an effort to identify how such a link might occur and how it might be used to improve memory in older adults.

“Almost everyone has experienced an uncanny recollection of the lyrics from a song from childhood, even when they have trouble remembering other details. We teach children ‘The Alphabet Song’ to help them remember their ABCs,” said Dr. Carstensen, who is Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy and professor of psychology at Stanford. “We need to know more about the ways that music may facilitate learning and memory at later ages.”

The two centers will bring together about 20 faculty, from Stanford and other universities, who represent a range of disciplines spanning the humanities, social sciences, medicine, engineering and business. The meeting, in coordination with the 2010-2011 campus-wide Memory arts theme, will be a guided discussion of important questions related to aging, memory and music and their interaction with our culture.

Voters willing to engage in discussion about trade-offs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 10:30 AM, EASTERN May 13, 2009

STANFORD, CA—Americans want answers to tough questions about the trade-offs involved in health care reform, according to new data released today by the Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL).

The findings are the result of a unique, bipartisan project that spanned nearly two years and united the typically disconnected worlds of politics, academia and the public.

“As lawmakers are preparing large-scale legislation with the goal of improving health care in our country, it is critical that leaders engage the public in an intelligent discussion about the options for change and what they mean both for individuals and for the system broadly,” said Dr. Laura Carstensen, SCL Director.

“The degree of conversation we’ve been having about the existing problems with the system must be mirrored with conversation about solutions to those problems. There is anxiety among the public about changes to their health care, which necessitates building public support for proposed changes to the system if they are to be successful.”

The project in brief: SCL worked with a group of distinguished health economists and political experts to identify six policy proposals designed to improve access and reduce cost, and then guided more than 2,000 voters through a comprehensive, balanced discussion about each proposal, including the advantages and disadvantages of each.

The unique approach: The project makes a distinct contribution to the national conversation about health care reform by placing different health care proposals in real context for voters. Voter viewpoints about each policy were measured not in the abstract as simply “pro” or “con”, but instead, in terms of the tradeoffs and compromises entailed in pursuing various reforms.

The ongoing discussion: SCL is posting the survey on its web site so interested voters, policymakers or advocates can access it as an aid for discussion and as a way to better understand the concerns of constituencies.

SOME KEY FINDINGS:

• While voters rate health reform as a very high priority, they do not form a consensus around any one of the six proposals, expressing instead ambivalence as they weight the tradeoffs involved in the implementation of each. Notably, none of the six proposals are clearly rejected outright either. Instead the findings reflect voters’ willingness to engage in a serious and substantive way on the topic of health care reform and their desire for more detailed information about the relative pros and cons of various reform proposals;

• The findings also reveal that voters’ reactions to various health care proposals are heavily tied to political party affiliation. In particular, Democrats show a real willingness to support proposals designed to expand access to health care. Voters across the partisanship spectrum–Democrats, Republicans and Independents—share strong concerns about health care costs;

• While 62 percent of Americans feel the health care system works well for them, 68 percent believe it does not work well for most Americans;

• 58 percent of Americans are not satisfied with cost and affordability of health care, but 50 percent are satisfied with the quality.

ABOUT THE STANFORD CENTER ON LONGEVITY

The Stanford Center on Longevity is transforming the culture of human aging using science, technology. In less than one century, life expectancy increased by an average of 30 years in developed regions of the world. Combined with a reduction in fertility rates across the same period, the changes in age distribution now under way in the population – both nationally and internationally – are dramatic and unprecedented. Added years can be a gift or a burden to humanity depending upon how they are used. The aim of the Center is to use increased life expectancy to bring about profound advances in the quality of life from early childhood to old age.

For more information, please visit https://longevity.stanford.edu

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is creating a new inter-disciplinary research network to help America prepare for the challenges and opportunities posed by our aging society.

Washington, DC, November 21, 2008 – The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is creating a new inter-disciplinary research network to help America prepare for the challenges and opportunities posed by our aging society. In the middle of the next decade, the United States will become an aging society, one feature of which is that those over age 60 will outnumber those under age 15. Although the nation will become increasingly gray in subsequent decades, we are not well prepared to deal with the myriad consequences of this impending reality.

“By 2050, American society may well have more walkers than strollers,” said MacArthur Vice President Julia Stasch, who announced the Network in remarks at The Gerontological Society of America’s annual scientific meeting. “This new research network will address the broad social implications of this uncharted demographic territory, examining questions like: how can a large, longer-living, elderly population maintain its productivity and contribute to its well-being – and society’s? How will it change our economy, our culture, our politics? Over time, will America look better, worse, or just different? And how can public policies — in immigration, work force development, health care, and others — and reform of our civic institutions affect our future in a positive direction?”

The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on an Aging Society, supported by a three-year, $3.9 million MacArthur grant, will be chaired by Dr. John Rowe, Professor at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and former CEO of Aetna. In the 1990s, Rowe chaired MacArthur’s Network on Successful Aging, which found that most of the factors that predict successful aging are not solely genetic but at least equally related to lifestyle. The Network published a best-selling book, Successful Aging.

“Much prior work in this area has focused on the economic implications of the looming demographic transition, including the increasing burden of entitlements,” said Rowe. “The new Network will supplement these efforts by exploring the substantial opportunities that may be derived by harnessing the wisdom and energy of the elderly in new organizations and arrangements that provide them with meaningful roles and yield economic, social, behavioral, and health benefits for them and other generations.”

Early next year, the Network will present new U.S. population and mortality projections based on emerging evidence and will compare these to current government forecasts. The projections will forecast mortality under scenarios that take account of advances in bio-gerontology with its life-extending potential and the effects of unhealthy life conditions. Such projections have major implications for the development of social, economic, and health policy.

Drawing on the collective expertise of its members, the Network will examine the potential benefits of remodeling the distribution of key activities, including education, work, and leisure, across the life course. Research and projects will focus on three themes:

• the positive and negative impact of key intergenerational issues on families and society;
• the development of meaningful roles for older people; and
• the potential effects that the various sources of diversity and inequalities may have on the structure, economy, and overall health of an aging society.

The Network’s members represent a wide range of disciplines, including gerontology, psychology and health behavior, macroeconomics and public policy, social epidemiology, cognitive neuroscience, demography, and aging policy. In addition to Dr. Rowe, members of the Network are Dr. Lisa Berkman, Director, Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard University; Dr. Robert Binstock, Professor of Aging, Health, and Society, Case Western Reserve University; Dr. Axel Börsch-Supan, Director, Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging, University of Mannheim, Germany; Dr. John T. Cacioppo, Professor and Director, Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, The University of Chicago; Dr. Laura L. Carstensen, Professor of Psychology and Director, Stanford Center on Longevity, Stanford University; Dr. Linda Fried, Dean and DeLamar Professor of Public Health, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University; Dr. Dana Goldman, Director, Health Economics, Finance, and Organization, RAND; Dr. James S. Jackson, Director, Institute for Social Research and Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan; Dr. Martin Kohli, Professor of Sociology, European University Institute, Florence, Italy; Dr. S. Jay Olshansky, Professor, School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago; and Mr. John Rother, Executive Vice President for Policy and Strategy, AARP.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. More information is available at www.macfound.org.

Press contact: Andy Solomon, (312) 726-8000, [email protected]

Adele Hayutin of Stanford Center on Longevity Speaks at Gerontological Society of America Meeting