The Old Age Age

This is likely the pull-quote of the week (I’ve seen it on about 20 sites in the last 10 minutes):

Of all the people in human history who ever reached the age of 65, half are alive now.

But only by a little…there’s lots more to chew on in the full article. Like how 65 became the retirement age:

The idea of a retirement age was invented by Otto von Bismarck in the 1880s, when as chancellor of Germany he needed a starting age for paying war pensions. He chose the age of 65 because that was typically when ex-soldiers died.

• demographics
• population