ABSTRACT
When does old age begin? Age can be defined in physiological, chronological or socioeconomic terms. Our bodies change as we pass from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to maturity and from maturity into old age, though these changes affect us all at different chronological points in time. But society marks or acknowledges these changes with precise chronological definitions and celebrates them with ‘rites of passage’. In Britain people start their formal education at five, are given the vote at eighteen, and are considered officially to have reached ‘retirement age’ at sixty if they are women and sixty-five if they are men.
