Key points
- 1 billion people were aged 60 and over in 2020, rising to 1.4 billion by 2030 and 2.1 billion by 2050 (WHO, fact sheet 1 October 2025).
- Healthy ageing is the process of developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables wellbeing in older age (WHO).
- One in every two people holds moderately or highly ageist attitudes (WHO Global report on ageism, 2021).
- The UN Decade of Healthy Ageing runs 2021–2030, with four action areas: ageism, age-friendly communities, person-centred integrated care, and quality long-term care.
Direct answer: The world is ageing fast. 1 billion people were aged 60 and over in 2020, rising to 1.4 billion by 2030 — 1 in 6 people — and 2.1 billion by 2050 (WHO, fact sheet 1 October 2025). Healthy ageing is the process of developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables wellbeing in older age. It is not the absence of disease; it is the ability to do what matters to a person, for as long as possible. This page covers the numbers, what shapes ageing, and ageism — and it links to the companion guides on dementia, falls, loneliness and elder abuse.
The numbers
The figures are WHO’s, from the ageing and health fact sheet published 1 October 2025. 1 billion people were aged 60 and over in 2020, rising to 1.4 billion by 2030 (1 in 6 people) and 2.1 billion by 2050 (doubling). The number aged 80 and over triples between 2020 and 2050, to 426 million. By 2050, two-thirds of people over 60 will live in low- and middle-income countries. A newer count, in WHO’s mental health of older adults fact sheet (20 July 2026), puts it at 1.1 billion people aged 60 and over in 2023, projected to nearly double to 2.1 billion by 2050 — about 1 in 5 people — with the number aged 80 and over more than tripling by 2060 to 545 million. The two counts differ because they use different base years; the direction is the same, and the scale is the same.
What healthy ageing means
WHO defines healthy ageing as the process of developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables wellbeing in older age. Functional ability is what a person can do: meet basic needs; learn, grow and make decisions; be mobile; build and maintain relationships; and contribute to society. About 75% of the diversity in capacity in older age is cumulative advantage and disadvantage — the advantages and disadvantages that build up across a life — and some 80-year-olds compare favourably with 30-year-olds on functional ability (WHO, healthy ageing questions and answers). The point is that ageing is not a single trajectory: two people of the same age can have very different capacities, and the difference is largely what happened to them earlier in life.
What shapes how we age
The proportion of life spent in good health has remained broadly constant, so added years are often lived in poor health. The environments people live in as children — even as developing fetuses — plus their physical and social environments, affect how they age. A balanced diet, regular physical activity and no tobacco use contribute to reducing the risk of non-communicable disease and delaying care dependency (WHO, 1 October 2025). The common conditions in older age are hearing loss, cataracts and refractive errors, back and neck pain and osteoarthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, depression and dementia — and people often experience several at once. Geriatric syndromes include frailty, urinary incontinence, falls, delirium and pressure ulcers. Dementia, falls and loneliness each have their own guide on this site; this page is the overview.
Ageism
This section is the home for the gap the research found. Ageism is stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination based on age. One in every two people holds moderately or highly ageist attitudes — stereotypes and prejudice — according to a survey of 83,034 people in 57 countries in the WHO Global report on ageism (2021). Ageism leads to poorer physical and mental health and reduced quality of life for older persons, and costs societies billions of dollars each year. It shortens lives, impedes recovery, leads to greater financial insecurity, exacerbates social isolation and loneliness, and reduces quality of life. WHO’s Europe region made combating ageism a pillar of its “Ageing is living” strategy for 2026–2030. Ageism is also why the numbers on this page are often read as a burden rather than a fact: the same ageing that this page describes as a triumph of longer lives is routinely described as a crisis, and that framing is itself ageism.
Age-friendly environments and the Decade
Supportive environments enable people to do what matters to them despite losses in capacity — safe and accessible public buildings and transport, and places that are easy to walk around (WHO). The UN General Assembly declared 2021–2030 the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing, with WHO leading implementation, in four action areas: ageism, age-friendly communities, person-centred integrated care, and quality long-term care. The Decade is the frame for the whole elders area on this site: the guides on dementia, falls, loneliness and elder abuse are each one part of it, and this page is the overview that holds them together.
Frequently asked questions
What is healthy ageing?
The process of developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables wellbeing in older age (WHO).
How many older people will there be by 2050?
2.1 billion people aged 60 and over — about 1 in 5 people — with the number aged 80 and over tripling to 426 million (WHO).
What is ageism?
Stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination based on age. One in every two people holds moderately or highly ageist attitudes (WHO, 2021).