"The question: If you could live forever in good health at a particular age, what age would you like to be?The answer, based on the average: five-oh. Half a century. Not surprisingly, younger people chose younger ages. Echo boomers, ages 18 to 36, thought the perfect age was 38. Gen Xers, ages 37 to 48, wanted to stay put at 49. Baby boomers, ages 49 to 67, thought 55 was pretty awesome. While mature adults, ages 68 and older, were happy to hold steady at 67. On average, men wanted to be younger than women, choosing 47 over the average perfect age for females of 53. Those with kids in the household thought staying 45 forever would rock; those without children around opted for 53."
"There are plenty of reasons people might call 50 the perfect age, psychologists say. “You have almost every opportunity,” says Barbara Becker Holstein, a psychologist with a private practice in Long Branch, N.J. “You’re young enough to be famous or start an organic farm and still have the muscle tone to work eight hours a day. You’re old enough to have wisdom but young enough that your parents are still alive so you have a generational experience. If you’re tired, you can ask the young man on the bus to get out of his seat for you. Or you can date the young man. The more I think about it, the more appealing it is.” Holstein says all of the recent medical – and cosmetic -- developments have also helped to give 50 a facelift.
“I really think 50 is the new 30 to 35,” she says."
According to the Census 2010, which provides data on the population based on a single year age, more than a thousand (1,029) people in Herkimer County would have been this ideal age when the census was taken, and 3,713 were age fifty in Oneida County during the Census 2010.
