These are the figuers for the US but the picture is very simelar in Europe:
Golden Boomers. “The 45-plus market is the new customer majority, ” says Lori Bitter, as quoted by Kenneth Gilpin in The New York Times. “This isn’t anything we are making up,” she says, “This is real. It’s huge.” Lori is a partner of J. Walter Thompson’s Mature Market Group, and if you don’t believe her, then just take a look at Census Bureau estimates that “roughly half of the nation’s population will be older than 40″ by the year 2010 … Right now, about four million people a year are turning 50,” and that’s a trend that will continue for years … in addition, more than 40 million Americans are already 65 or older.”
https://reveries.com/cool_news/2003/december/dec_1a.html