I'm 42, overweight, and poor. I'm an elderly middle-aged person who's maybe got 20-25 years to go.
this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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The way you put it like that sounds so crass and soulless.
It’s true though.
What should it be, then?
Something like, "I'm alive, in fairly good health, and I do not define my value by how much I'm able to work or how many years I have left to live."
It's just really hard to talk about expected lifetimes and not sound that way.
My kids say:
Birth to 30 is young.
31-60 is middle aged.
Over 60 is old.
Over 90 is fucking old.
People are aging more slowly than they did in the past, better information about health now. Look up 55 year old celebrities. These are certainly middle aged people, they aren't young, and most don't look old either. That is how I would define middle age and it's getting longer. You can't get old at 40, you will be old too long.
Celebrities pay a lot of money to stay looking the way they do, and most people who have to work labor and stuff dont have the privilege to look or feel that way
Sure, totally agree. But average people too - we just are not aging as fast as our parents or their parents. Not so much a longer life, just not as old for as long.
A lot of that has to do with smoking. Smoking adds wrinkles. It makes you look older. A lot of older celebrities smoked and a lot of younger ones don't.
Celebrities also have the best health care, access to the best food, and personal trainers. There's a reason you only really see them either dying from freak accident, substance abuse, or random hard to beat cancer.
The rest of us do not get those allowances.
It blew my mind to learn that Bob Odenkirk was 52 when they started filming Better Call Saul. To me, he looked like he was in his 30s.
(I'm not that great at estimating age just by looking at someone, though.)
Only thing keeping me working is the need for money. There some way to invest where I don’t need to work? 🤣
Yeah, you just need to start with enough money you don't need to work.
Good ol get born rich scheme
Exactly. This guy working to 65 because he's been tricked, not because he needs to.
Dude, most of us would stop working if we could, and those that would keep working would only be doing it because they enjoy it. Nobody's getting tricked into working longer.
"Coerced" would be a better term, but I think the idea behind "tricked" is that there's a wealth of propaganda that normalizes dedicating your life to your career and defining yourself by your vocation. We're being decieved by people who profit by maintaining the status quo, even when the status quo is harmful.
Overall average lifespan is a misleading statistic because it includes people who die young (infant mortality for example really brings it down). As you get older, the average lifespan for someone of your specific age increases.
does it... keep increasing?
It does, because we're talking about the total lifespan instead of remaining lifespan. A person who is 120 may have a 10% chance of living another year; but a 50 year old probably has less than a 1% chance living 71 more years. Of course the 50 year old probably has more than a 99% chance of living another year. So the older you are, the older your expected total lifespan is, even if your expected remaining lifetime is shorter.
You're absolutely right, stats are a very misunderstood subject. It's difficult to contextualize stats like this when the population is so large. My measurement for when I got old was when I started to meet old friends and at some point in the conversation we begin talking about other friends who we both knew who've passed away since the last time we've talked.
A person who is 120 has a less than 1 percent chance of living to the next year. 120 is the maximum lifespan of humans so far. Only one person in recorded history has lived past 120, and she made it to 122.
Infinitely. The more you age, the older you get.
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73 seems pretty low. It’s 77,28 years in the US and 81,41 here in the Netherlands.
Still, it’s weird people call 50 middle aged when it’s more like 40.
Well but 50 makes sense though you are kinda useless in your first 20-25 years then you start working acquiring experience etc 25 years later you are in the middle then 25 years later you die
It makes sense if you look at it like that
73 years is the life expectancy of a men in the US. Females tend to get 5-6 years older than men.
Ethnicity, as well as economic resources also play a huge role.
Even your zip code is an indicator:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data-visualization/life-expectancy/index.html
If I understand this correctly, it's life expectancy at birth, right? So if you read this, the relevant-to-you life expectancy is even lower. Though AFAIK you also get a "bonus" for still being alive, so it's probably a wash ...
I'm 50 and definitely working at least to 70. I can't afford life now, I can't afford to retire!
That's how I feel. If I'm lucky, my retirement supports only me and partially my wife for like 10 years. My wife's retirement will stretch us to 15 years.
Society is looking grim.
i have always assumed 'middle aged' meant somewhere 35-40. tbf i dont use or hear the term often.
Regardless of what the median life expectantly is, I don't care I'm living to 100 years old. Barring accident of course. But I'm just too curious what the next 45+ years will be in the world. What are the new discoveries? New shows? What happens to the political situation? Will we become a space faring race? Or will we have to solve the climate crisis first, and stop warring?
I want to know. So I'm working to make that a reality.
Narrator: they didn't figure it out
(Joking OC, even if I think you are a bit too optimistic I do like the optimism)
To be fair most people who live to the average life expectancy do live past it, the average gets skewed down by people dying in car accidents in their 20s and such like.
Eh demographics shows a grim tale. People start really dying around 65 and it accelerates pretty quickly into the next few decades. Very few people live to be 100. About half of an age cohort will make it to 75. A quarter will make it to 85. This is easily visible on demographic charts.
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I thought it's because it's the middle of your adult life. 50 is the midpoint between 20 and 80.
i think it makes more sense to split it into thirds: for example in germany, for biological men, its 78 year, meaning you enter your middle ages at 26 years old and your old age at 52 years old. For biological women, its 83 years of life expectancy, meaning you enter your middle ages at 27.6 years old and your old age at 55.3 years old
edit: didn't mean to cause a gender debate, i dont think the statistic acounts for trans people, which i don't agree with. i would be curious to see the life expectancy statistics of trans conpared to cis people. i would guess cis would have been a better way for me to say it because i would think official statistics would go with your "official" gender but idk
The definition for middle aged (edit: as I have heard it) has always been 40. Most people live until 80 or a little less, so it makes sense.
Yeah, 40 is the traditional 'over the hill' birthday.
My definition for middle aged will be 40 until I reach 40 at which point I will shift this definition to 45.
"Most people" live until their late eighties (at least in Western Europe), modal and median ages at death are generally 86-90, whereas the mean is lower as you have around 15 years to die in after 85, but 85 years to die in before which pulls it down
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If we look past the numbers and mathematical term for middle, the stages of life could be determined by how capable or productive a person is. In that way, 50 is still a bit high, but it's close to the peak of productivity almost regardless of the job at hand.
On a positive note, we should be happy if this "middle-age" increases, because it means that we're more healthy and capable for longer. This is also very visible. Just during my life (mid 40s) I can see that the people of today in their late 60s look and behave as the people in their 50s did in my youth. It's like the capable years have been extended by 10-15 years.
On a more depressing note, the expected lifespan hasn't increased that much in the meantime, so it's not exactly linear. It seems that the change from being capable to being incapable due to age is really sharp. People don't enjoy long retirements the same way as before.
You know how working 5 days a week to have a 2 days off is bullshit. You can never do all the things in the weekend that you dream about all week. Same thing about retirement. You'll never get to enjoy the carrot at the end of the stick.
If you want to do something, do it now. If you can't do it now because of obligations, you need to change your obligations. Seize the day.
Could "middle aged" more be referring to the middle after you become a real adult? Like at 18
73-18=55
55/2 =27.5
27.5+18=45.5
So still less than 50 but a lot closer.
I always figured it was older people trying to feel younger. But yeah I think it works this way too.
Those two things are not linked.
A factor might be that no one likes to be remembered theyre soon to die..
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This should start from 18 or 20 though I guess. Most of us don't start working properly until that age.
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