What is Old Age? Variation over Time and between Cultures

Abstract

Abstract At first sight the answer to the question posed in the title to this chapter seems to be exceedingly simple. Since ageing is a series of biological changes occurring in all humans at all ages and at all times, then old age is the name for the final stage of that programme during which decline itself accelerates markedly. The only thing that has to be settled is the point at which individuals reach that final stage, and this is evidently a particular birth anniversary, the 50th, 55th, 60th, 65th, 70th, or whatever. Any person who has passed that anniversary is to be considered as being in old age. The proportion which the total of these people makes up of the whole is the obvious measure of how old a population is in comparative terms.