15–30–45 to 30–60–90
The World’s Divisions Into Age Groups
Almost half a century ago, in my twenties, working as a simultaneous interpreter with the United Nations, I became fascinated with the world’s different perceptions of age. It was at the first UN wolrd population conference in 1974 in Bucharest, Romania. There, in a plenary meeting, I heard something I will never forget — delegates saying that we needed more young people as those over fifty just couldn’t work anymore, that is contribute to society.
The comment irked me. Some of our best interpreters were nearing the then United Nations retirement age of sixty and quite a few retired interpreters, some in their seventies, were brought back regularly on short term contracts because of their expertise. Besides, my parents, on just either side of sixty were still working and doing as much at home as they ever did. In fact, they themselves repainted the interior of their house, a rather big two-story Queen Anne, two years later.
The fascination grew as going back to grad school at the very end of the seventies in order to ‘change careers’, something that was even covered in a book of the times, I was shocked when a salesperson (a woman) in one of Boston’s most fashionable department stores pointed out, when I asked what was the best cream for someone my age, “well, you can’t do anything for someone over thirty.” Yes, you are reading correctly. There is a hint here. In the nineteen sixties the median age in the United States was under thirty and just around that in 1980. At the same time in countries like Switzerland and France, in which I lived in the 1970’s, the median age, though not far from thirty, was above that.
In the nineties, working as a program director for a non-profit putting together world meetings, I somehow wound up doing research on the matter. At that time the median age in the USA was slowly going up towards thirty-five while in France and Switzerland it was creeping up towards forty. At present the median age in the USA is heading towards forty while in France and Switzerland it is over forty. No one would dare tell a woman who is thirty now that she is over the hill. In fact, one would not do it to a person over forty. Yet, those of you who were there, think of the way actresses over forty were treated half a century ago.
To go back to the world significance of median age, consider the fact that even China and Russia have median ages that are getting closer and closer to forty, while the better off countries of the Middle East are all over thirty. India’s average is almost at thirty. However, there are quite a few countries whose median age is not close to thirty or even twenty. Some have stayed in what was prevalent in most parts of the world as late as nineteen hundred, that is a lifespan where reproduction started at around fifteen, a person was fully mature or beginning to be considered ‘older’ at thirty, and mostly gone by forty-five. All we have to do is consider the average lifespan in the United States itself in nineteen hundred. It was just around fifty. In India it was less than twenty-five.
The challenge with this is that so many of our perceptions are based on age. Just consider the following. Someone born in 1980 into a family that could and did travel, sometimes taking a plane, will remember what airports and controls were like before Nine Eleven. Of course, security measures to enter many buildings have changed dramatically since then, too, so even someone over forty who has never left the same city or town, has a good chance of seeing the difference! Someone like me who went on safaris (just looking — no killing) in the nineteen seventies and been surrounded on all sides as far as the eye could see by literally millions of incredible wildebeests does not think of ‘preservation’ the way someone who has just been on a safari in the last decade.
The leaders and the people in countries with completely different median ages do not see the world the same way. In fact, we of the top range, with reproduction starting at either side of thirty, active life going on to past sixty, and the Elysian fields receding closer and closer to ninety and later, seem to be old dictators to those who are still in the first stage and bothersome ‘elders’ to those in the twenty-forty-sixty stage. It is only when we get to those near our stage, that is those in the twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five stage that we start making sense. Think of it this way: how would we like being told what you should do by those in the next stage, that is those who are in the thirty-five, seventy, hundred-five stage? Look and you will see that there are countries that are slowly getting up there. Even more interesting, we have groups in our own countries that are reaching that level!!
