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Sixty is the new 40

Health & Science

Sixty is the new 40, according to scientists who say longer, healthier lives mean people now hit middle-age later.

Doctor Sergei Scherbov, who led the study into ageing, said: “What we think of as old has changed. “Age can be measured as time already lived or it can be adjusted taking into account time left to live. What we think of as old has changed over time, and it will need to continue changing in the future as people live longer, healthier lives. Someone who is 60 years old today, I would argue, is middle-aged – but 200 years ago, a 60-year-old would be a very old person.”

Dr Scherbov, from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, led a joint project with New York’s Stony Brook University looking at how life expectancy has increased.

The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found people across Europe were currently viewed as “old” when they hit 65. But the researchers predict that by 2050 when people reach their 60s they will be considered “middle-aged”.

Previous research by the same team has shown that the traditional definition puts many people in the category of “old” who have characteristics of much younger people.

Stony Brook’s Professor Warren Sanderson said it meant that society would need to change to meet people’s different needs in future.

He added: “The onset of old age is important because it is often used as an indicator of increased disability and dependence, and decreased labour force participation.

“Adjusting what we consider to be the onset of old age when we study different countries and time periods is crucial both for the scientific understanding of population ageing for the formulation of policies consistent with our current demographic situation.”

For the study, the researchers compared the proportion of the population that was categorised as “old” using the conventional measure that assumes that people become “old” at age 65 and the proportion based on their new measure of age, which incorporates changes in life expectancy.

They looked at three scenarios for future population ageing in Europe, using three different rates of increase for life expectancy, from no increase to an increase of about 1.4 years per decade, the level projected by the Wittgenstein Centre’s European Demographic Datasheet.

The results show that, as expected, faster increase in life expectancy lead to faster population ageing when people are categorised as “old” at age 65 regardless of time or place, but, surprisingly, that they lead to slower population ageing when the new measures of age are used.

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