Old Age in European Cultures: A Significant Presence from Antiquity to the Present

Contrary to widespread belief, significant numbers of people have lived long lives throughout recorded history. On average, women have lived longer than men. Definitions of old age as beginning between the ages of sixty and seventy have been remarkably consistent through time, despite major social and economic changes, as has government enforcement of age-related regulations, increasingly as government bureaucracy grew from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Despite long-prevailing simplified stereotypes, the reality of old age has always been highly diverse. Nowhere have people been respected or cared for simply because of their age; nor have all been frail dependents. Some have always been active to late ages, making positive, independent contributions to their families and communities, a fact that is too often overlooked by historians. Older people have mattered in all cultures and should not be overlooked.