Age myth: I’m 62. Stop telling me I’m old now

We have reached Peak 65: More than 4.1 million Americans will turn 65 each year through 2027, a record surge. Baby boomers will mark the occasion in predictable ways, but beneath the cake and Social Security jokes lies an unease: The birthday boys and girls will now be officially “old.”

American society relies on multiple markers to define old age. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act began to protect me in the workplace when I turned 40. I qualified as “near elderly” under the rules of the Department of Housing and Urban Development at 50, and I started receiving a senior citizen discount at my local Harris Teeter at 60 — though, mysteriously, only on Thursdays.

But if there is one widely accepted age for becoming old in America, it’s 65. That’s when I’ll be eligible for Medicare, and it has been, roughly, the most common retirement age for American men over the past 60 years.

Oddly, we use the calendar with such determinism, given how differently we age. If you’ve met one 70-year-old, you’ve met one 70-year-old. I’m 62, active, healthy and still working. Yet in recent weeks, I’ve been shamed on the pickleball court and at the gym by people in their 70s, and I’ve visited a 70-year-old whose body has betrayed her so dramatically that basic acts of showering and toileting are beyond her. As life expectancy extends, chronological age tells us less and less about physical and cognitive capacity.

Sixty-five has long been a demarcation for old age. But it has been with us so long that the definition now makes little sense — and works to our collective detriment.

Start with work and retirement. We’ve been conditioned to believe that retirement should begin around 65, and that belief still shapes our behaviours and our economy. Mandatory retirement has been largely illegal for decades, yet we treat 65 as a biological imperative. The average retirement age for American men in 1962 was slightly above 65, when their life expectancy was 67. In 2022, the average retirement age was slightly below 65, even though life expectancy had risen to about 75.

This makes little sense once you examine the historical roots. Our modern expectations trace back to the 1880s, when Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Germany introduced the world’s first public pension plan. He set retirement at 70 — later reduced to 65 — at a time when the average life expectancy hovered around 40. Some people reached retirement age, but most did not, as von Bismarck surely anticipated.

Yet his benchmark still shapes how we think about life’s transitions. You’ve heard the cliché that 70 is the new 60, and while easy to dismiss, it understates genuine physical improvements over the last half-century.

The best evidence comes from Japan, which has tracked older adults for decades using walking speed and grip strength. Over 20 years, both measures improved significantly. Today’s 75- to 79-year-olds walk faster than people five years younger did a generation earlier. Comparable studies show similar progress across much of the developed world.

Being prematurely classified as old carries consequences. Businesses’ tendency to disfavour “old” workers cuts millions off from social networks, raising risks of loneliness and isolation. Becca Levy, a psychologist at Yale, has found that older adults who absorb more negative attitudes tend to be less mobile, have poorer memory, recover more slowly, are more vulnerable to cognitive decline, and die an average of 7.5 years sooner than peers with more positive views.

So if 65 is no longer old, is it 70 or 75? Do I lose my Harris Teeter discount if I’m still healthy and working? I’ll keep the discount — but reject the notion that there is any universal dividing line between middle age and old age. I’ll know it when I see it, though it may look different for you than for me.

The New York Times