There soon will be more people over the age of 60 in New York City than schoolchildren. The city is finally taking action.
It felt like a bad joke — worse than the one about the chicken. Whenever Ed Aarons tried to cross the road in his New York City neighborhood, he never quite made it to the other side.
As soon as the crosswalk signal said go, the 83-year-old moved quickly. “I trained myself to rush across, to give myself a certain allotted time to make it across,” he said. “And I never did it.” By the time he made it to the middle, the light would change, the cars would fly and there Aarons stood in the median, “trapped,” he said.
But that was several years ago, before New York — a place famous for its youthful buzz — paused momentarily to come to grips with the fact that it’s growing older. Today, roughly 11 percent of the city’s 8 million people are over the age of 60. By 2030, it will be closer to one in five.