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An octogenarian is a person in the age group of 80 to 89 years old. An octogenarian of today is born between February 13, 1915 and February 13, 1925.
In most countries of the world, living octogenarians have all surpassed their average life expectancy. In a few countries, such as Japan, however, the life expectancy for women is 80 or over. These countries tend to have excellent longevity, with Japan for instance supplying several of the past world's oldest people.
Octogenarians of the Developed World
In many of the world's more developed nations that experienced the first and second world wars together and run on the same generational constellation, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, France, Canada and Italy, people who are currently octogenarians belong to the G.I. Generation, or "Greatest Generation" that fought World War II. The generation's long history of collective civic activity and belief in government entitlements, combined with the government benefits that other generations believed they deserved for their massive sacrifices and heroism during the war, has led to massive senior lobbying that tilted government programs favorably towards the elderly. This has also been a factor in senior discounts that benefit people in their eighties, although as octogenarians have all surpassed their life expectancy and the G.I. Generation ages and slowly dies off, several amusement parks and other public places have recently begun dropping their senior discounts. Advances in health and medicine have led to more octogenarians being alive today than at any time before.
List of octogenarians
1915
1916
1917 - Bobby Bragan, baseball player, eponym of the Bobby Bragan Awards
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction author
- Phyllis Diller, comedian
- Zsa Zsa Gabor, actress
- Don Herbert, science TV show host
- Sir Andrew Huxley, Nobel-winning physiologist
- I. M. Pei, architect
- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., historian
- Caspar Weinberger, U.S. Secretary of Defense during Reagan administration
- Andrew Wyeth, painter
1918 - Ingmar Bergman, film director
- Joey Bishop, member of the Rat Pack
- Philip Jose Farmer, science fiction author
- Betty Ford, former U.S. first lady
- Billy Graham, evangelist
- Madeleine L'Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time
- Nelson Mandela, first Black president of South Africa
- Oral Roberts, evangelist
- Mickey Spillane, writer
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, novelist
- Abigail Van Buren, advice columnist
- Helen Wagner, longtime soap opera actress
1919
1920 - Richard Adams, author of Watershp Down
- Ray Bradbury, science fiction author
- Dick Francis, mystery writer
- Rev. Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church ("Moonies")
- Stan Musial, baseball player, known as "The Man"
- Pope John Paul II
- Mickey Rooney, actor
- Ravi Shankar, sitarist
- John Paul Stevens, United States Supreme Court justice
- Wayne Thiebaud, artist
- Shelley Winters, actress
1921 - Hugh Downs, game show host, journalist
- Betty Friedan, feminist author
- John Glenn, astronaut
- Hua Guofeng, Chinese politician who cracked down on the Gang of Four
- Monty Hall, Canadian actor, singer, game show host
- Jesse Helms, retired senator from North Carolina
- Farley Mowat, author of Never Cry Wolf
- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
- Nancy Reagan, former U.S. first lady
- Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA
- Abe Vigoda, actor
1922 - John Anderson, independent candidate for president of the United States in 1980
- Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former head of the UN
- Helen Gurley Brown, author of Sex and the Single Girl
- Sid Caesar, actor
- Pierre Cardin, fashion designer
- Stanley Cohen, Nobel-winning doctor
- Charles Evers, Civil Rights Movement figure
- Kelly Freas, artist
- Ernest Hollings, senator from South Carolina
- Bil Keane, draws Family Circus
- Jack Klugman, actor
- Lyndon LaRouche, political author, perennial "alternative" Democratic candidate who blasts both the Democratic and Republican parties
- Stan Lee, heads Marvel Comics
- Dick Martin, actor and comedian
- Darren McGavin, actor
- George McGovern, liberal American politician
- Carl Reiner, director, father of Rob Reiner
- Alain Robbe-Grillet, avant-garde French novelist
- Norodom Sihanouk, king of Cambodia
- Kurt Vonnegut, writer
- Betty White, "Golden Girls" actress
- Howard Zinn, historian
1923 - Bob Barker, game show host
- Jan and Stan Berenstain, authors of the "Berenstain Bears" series
- Carol Channing, Broadway actress
- Bob Dole, Republican nominee for president of the United States in 1996
- Henry Kissinger, diplomat
- Norman Mailer, author of The Naked and the Dead
- Marcel Marceau, mime
- Ed McMahon, introduced the Tonight Show with "Heeeere's Johnny!"
- Jean Nidetch, founder of Weight Watchers International
- Shimon Peres, former Prime Minister of Israel
- Prince Rainier III, prince of Monaco
- Sumner Redstone, television magnate
- Wally Schirra, astronaut
- Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-winning poet
- Lee Teng-hui, Taiwanese president
- Mort Walker, draws Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois
- Chuck Yeager, first pilot to surpass the speed of sound
1924 - Lauren Bacall, actress
- George H. W. Bush, 41st President of the United States
- Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States
- Doris Day, singer
- Charlton Heston, actor and pro-gun activist
- Lee Iacocca, automobile executive
- Don Knotts, actor The Andy Griffith Show
- Benoit Mandelbrot, mathematician
- Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean politician
- William Rehnquist, United States Supreme Court Chief Justice
- Eva Marie Saint, actress in On the Waterfront and North by Northwest
- Phyllis Schlafly, anti-feminism activist
- Earl Scruggs, musician
- Atal Behari Vajpayee, Prime minister of India, 1998-2004
1925
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