[quote Exhausteddog]*@ChestnutStuffing. Interesting point about heathly life expectancy but your comment about 70s being the age where things start going wrong for people only applies for people who live in the most affluent parts of the U.K.
In some other areas for men it is in their 50s.
The mumsnet demographic is not typical of the majority of people living in the U.K. All these fit and healthy 70 and 80 year olds are the exception and not the standard*
...but then do you have a differing scale of what is elderly, according to life expectancy...or would you say people died during middle age.
If life expectancy in a developing country was, for example 50, would someone be considered elderly at 45, or would you say people didnt live until old age in that country...?
I'm in my early 40s, I'm fit and healthy so far, but based on the women in my family, I would feel lucky if I lived until I was 70.my DM died on her early 60s, I feel she died before she was elderly.[/quote]
In some places being in your 40s you would be seen as an elder.
However - to some extent the idea that people all died at 40 in the middle ages, or in poor places, is misleading. Many people died as infants which makes the average age of death look lower.
It is true that with poor food and medicine, many adults die on the younger side.
But the oldest people are actually fairly even. There were people who lived to be 80 in the middle ages. There are more now. But people who live to be 100 are rare now and were then. People who live to be 110 have always existed it seems but have always been vanishingly rare.
At a certain point the body, no matter how well you treat it, starts to break down and wear out. If you don't die of something else it will be cancer, a stroke, or heart failure - something will give out.
For most people that seems to begin by about 70, if nothing has exacerbated it before that.