Women define themselves as being 'old' later than men, study shows

DPA
·3 min read
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You're only as old as you feel, as the saying goes. But according to a new study, being "old" doesn't mean the same thing to women as it does to men. Annette Riedl/dpa
You're only as old as you feel, as the saying goes. But according to a new study, being "old" doesn't mean the same thing to women as it does to men. Annette Riedl/dpa

At what age do we officially become old?

Going by a subjective definition, women admit to feeling "old" significantly later than men do, according to international research 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," study author Markus Wettstein from Humboldt University in Berlin told dpa.

This may related to the fact that women live longer on average. Another explanation is that women are more stigmatized in old age than men, the psychologist said. Women may therefore be setting a higher bar for old age in order to distance themselves from this negative image.

The study by researchers from Humboldt University, Stanford University, the University of Luxembourg and the University of Greifswald analysed data from around 14,000 people born between 1911 and 1974. The central question was: At what age would you describe someone as old?

Wettstein and his team also 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 perception that being old begins at the age of 75 on average. According to the scientists' model, 65-year-olds born in 1911 felt that old age began at 71.

What is driving this change? "One point is certainly that life expectancy has risen in recent decades," said Wettstein. According to health figures 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 11 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, in countries like the US, UK, France and Germany where the increase in life expectancy has been slowing down in recent years, the trend towards a later perceived start to old age is also slowing accordingly, says Wettstein.

Another reason for this changing definition of being old is that one key marker of this is the start of retirement - the age for which has risen over the years in many Western countries, explains Wettstein.

In addition, old people today are on average healthier and fitter than in the past and therefore appear younger for longer.

According to Wettstein, the scientists discovered another phenomenon when analysing the data: "As a person gets older, they push the onset of old age a little further back," Wettstein said. So a 60-year-old woman, for whom old age begins at 74, might then think at 65 that old age only starts at 75.