When does ‘being old’ start in UK and Europe

Professor Dominic Abrams and Dr Melanie Vauclair from the School of Psychology at the University of Kent have presented findings from the European Social Survey’s research project ‘Attitudes to Age in the UK and Europe’.

The survey showed that age prejudice being treated as ‘too young’ or ‘too old’ is perceived to be a serious or very serious issue by 63% of respondents, so it is obviously important to know what these age labels mean to people.

“To find out, the survey asked when does ‘youth’ end and ‘old age’ begin? For the United Kingdom, the average response to this question was that youth ends at the age of 35 and old age begins at 58,” Professor Abrams said.

However, the survey also revealed that people’s judgements depend strongly on the ‘age of the beholder’.

On average, the youngest respondents (15 to 24 year old) judged that youth ends at 28 and old age starts at 54, whereas the oldest age group (80 and older) judged that youth ends at 42 and old age starts at 67.

In the UK, there is a gap of almost 40 years between young people’s judgement of the end of youth and older people’s judgement of the beginning of old age. However, more startlingly, there is a gap of only 12 years between older people’s judgement of the end of youth and younger people’s judgement of the start of old age.

In general, men regarded the end of youth and start of old age to begin two years earlier than women did.

There were also large differences between European countries. Youth was perceived to end earliest among respondents in Portugal (at the age of 29) and latest by those in Cyprus (at the age of 45).

Portugal scored lowest for the belief when old age starts (at the age of 51), whereas Belgium ranked highest (at the age 64).

The findings illustrate that when people discover another person’s age, their judgement of whether that person is young or old is highly subjective and this may have important implications in influencing people’s assumptions about the person’s responsibilities, rights and capabilities.

“This evidence shows that what counts as young and old is very largely down to the age of the beholder,” Professor Abrams said.

Amongst other findings, the survey also showed that 28% of UK respondents reported that they had been treated with prejudice because of their age in the past year and that the youngest age group were more likely to report experiences of prejudice than any other.

Across the European countries in the survey, age prejudice was most widely reported in Finland (47%) and least so in Cyprus and Portugal (19%). The UK ranked 16 out of 21 countries in regard to this question.