Global Aging: Elderly Now Outnumber Infants for First Time
Something happened to the human population that had never happened before in recorded history. Somewhere between 2020 and 2025, the number of people aged 65 and older passed the number of children aged 5 and younger. Not close. Passed. The US Census Bureau confirmed it in an official report released in August 2026. Let's look at what this actually means, with real numbers. The Moment That Flipped For as long as humans have kept records, there have always been more young children than elderly people. That's simply how population pyramids worked, more people at the bottom, fewer at the top, as age naturally thinned the numbers. That shape just inverted at the global level. The Census Bureau's report, titled "An Aging World: 2025," confirms this reversal happened for the first time in human history between 2020 and 2025. As of 2025, the global population aged 65 and older stood at 852 million people, 10.5 percent of the world's total 8.132 billion people....