Old age is social as much as biological
Old age covers the years as people approach and pass life expectancy, yet which birthday counts as old has shifted across cultures and eras. Older bodies regenerate less and suffer more illness and injury, while retirement, loneliness and ageism bring social problems that biology alone does not explain.
No official global definition exists. The United Nations uses 60 and over, most developed Western countries retire people around 65, and a 2001 report by the US National Institute on Aging and the WHO's African regional office put the start at 50 in Sub-Saharan Africa, where ability to contribute matters more than a birth date and life expectancy is lower. Across three thousand years of European history the threshold held steady between about 60 and 70, and in the early Middle Ages older men gained standing through Christian ideas about the moral worth of age.
Gerontologists split the group. In rich countries many people in their late 60s and 70s stay fit and self-reliant, while frailty usually mounts after 80, though so-called superagers keep their vigour far longer. One scheme names young-old at 60 to 69, middle-old at 70 to 79 and very old from 80; others begin at 65 and put the oldest-old at 85 and up. British scholars Paul Higgs and Chris Gilleard added a fourth age of inactive, unhealthy decline after the active retirement of the third.
Scholars measure age along chronological, biological, psychological and social lines, and Wattis and Curran add a developmental one, so becoming a grandparent can make someone old regardless of years. The polite American term senior citizen was apparently coined during a 1938 political campaign; cartoonist Al Hirschfeld said his father Isaac invented it.
A 2023 US poll found about 37 percent of adults aged 50 to 80 felt lonely and 34 percent socially isolated. Charities in North America and Britain respond with volunteer visits, calls and letters, and in 2011 the UN proposed a human-rights convention for older people.
Source: Old age
