Longer life expectancy

For women, old age begins later than for men

When do you become old? On average, women answer this question with a higher number than men. This was the result of a study published on Monday in the journal "Psychology and Aging". "On average, women set the start of old age around two and a half years later," explained study author Markus Wettstein from Humboldt University in Berlin. This could be due to the fact that women live longer on average.

Another explanation is that women are more stigmatized in old age than men, explained the psychologist. The onset of old age is therefore set higher in order to distance oneself from the negative image.

At what age do you become "old"?
The study by researchers from Humboldt University, Stanford University in the USA, the University of Luxembourg and the German University of Greifswald is based on data from the German Ageing Survey, a representative survey of people aged 40 and over across Germany. The researchers analyzed data from around 14,000 people born between 1911 and 1974. The central question: At what age would you describe someone as old?

Increased life expectancy has an impact
Wettstein and his team found that adults today feel that old age begins later than people born in earlier decades. Accordingly, 65-year-olds who were born in 1955 had the subjective feeling that old age begins on average at the age of 75. According to the scientists' model, 65-year-olds born in 1911 felt that old age began at 71.

What is this connected to? "One point is certainly that life expectancy has risen in recent decades," said Wettstein. According to the Federal Statistical Office in Germany, for example, 65-year-old men had an average of 10.4 years to live between 1901 and 1910, while women of the same age lived for around eleven years. Between 1960 and 1962, men of the same age in West Germany were already living 12.4 years and women 14.6 years longer. In the years 2019 to 2021, it was 17.8 years for men and around 21 years for women. However, the increase in life expectancy has recently slowed down, according to the figures. According to Wettstein, the trend towards a later perceived start to old age is also slowing down accordingly.

People are healthier and fitter
Another reason for the development is that the start of retirement is typically associated with being old, but the retirement age has risen over the years, explained Wettstein. In addition, old people today are on average healthier and fitter than in the past and therefore appear younger for longer.

The participants in the ageing survey were interviewed several times over the years. According to Wettstein, the scientists discovered another phenomenon when analyzing the data: "As a person gets older, they push the onset of old age a little further back," said the psychologist. For example, a 60-year-old woman, for whom old age begins at 74, thinks at 65 that old age only starts at 75.