Introduction

Below is the extremely distinctive geography of those in the middle (fourth) stage of life: the mid-years of 25-39 that can be just as clustered into particular enclaves of London as are their younger counterparts into university student lands as shown on page 88.

As you read on try to remember that there are differing numbers of people in their midlife in each place, although in most places between one and two fifths of the population are aged between 25 and 39. In the pages that follow we show what is typical and the rates for people of these ages, but these refer to far more people within London than almost anywhere else and only to a small minority of the population who spend these years of life in more coastal and rural environments.

If childhood and infanthood are the years before, and young adulthood the years in between, by ages 25-39 you have truly arrived. Welcome to the world. You are your own person and your life is soon half over.

We call these years the midlife. Most people become parents at these ages; more and more do not. Very few now live with or look after elderly relatives in their own home, but many are carers of others outside of their home. And these are also the first years in which age begins in earnest to catch up with you. In some places it catches up far faster than others. More than one in eight people in midlife in Glasgow, and only in parts of Glasgow, have a health status usually associated with old age. This is so stark that we highlight it first, in Figure 5.1 opposite, as it needs to be borne in mind throughout the pages that follow, and it also lays some foundations for what we later see in the next stage of life.