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for grandparents seems to be helping take care of grandchildren. Doesn't that falsify next generation theory? Note quite. Retirement typically means dependence on savings or subsidy. The parental generation subsidizes both the young and the old. Retirees can be interpreted to some extent as hired though willing caregivers paid for by parents. That explains part. The rest, I think, is best explained as replenishing a capital reserve. Nature builds up reserves in good times and depletes them in bad times. A rise in longevity from what is normally needed for lineage survival is a rise in human capital reserves. Human capital is the most versatile kind. We geezers have lost a step. But we remember how it’s done. We particularly remember how parenting and homemaking are done, since those change least with technology. Julius Caesar’s nanny, with a few pointers, could probably fill in as a nanny today. If the parental generation were pulled away to fight a war, or rebuild after a catastrophe, we oldsters could keep up the home front. Free growth theory, abundantly proved in the data, is essential to next generation theory. What each generation invests in the next is all its fitness (total capital). All ex post growth, up or down, is added or subtracted for free. Catastrophes and windfalls are the random kind of free growth. Tech gain is the accumulating “secular” (of ages) kind. ] wouldn't put it past nature to have learned that sustained growth means rising risk. She could adjust with reserves. We may be selected (a nicer word than programmed) to build human capital reserves intentionally, whether or not seeing nature’s motives for the buildup as distinct from our own, when real wealth doubles with every generation. That intentional or ex ante part would mean investment in the reserve. It isn’t targeted to the grandoffspring generation, because they aren’t expected to draw it down unless needed. All the rest of the buildup of human capital reserves in lifespan prolongation is best explained as random free growth if my interpretation holds Chapter 7 Petty’s Idea 2/3/16 24 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011083