The other half of that equation is that the people who didn’t “get theirs” and who belong to disproportionately impoverished demographics also don’t tend to live into old age as frequently as people who have more privilege and who can afford the medical care that is associated with aging.
So at least some portion of this trend is due to survivorship bias.
I think there’s a dating component to it. The vast majority of young people are required to have a more collective attitude to social norms in their peer groups as a necessity to being a dateable human being. Deviating too far into contrarianism (relative to the rest of the age group) results in becoming an undateable incel.
A lot of older people give up on dating, and the social pressures that go along with it disappear with it. Same goes for those who have already paired off, had kids and created families where they’ve now also disconnected from most former friends because the family unit becomes 97% of their life. Staying together for the kids creates its own entirely different social pressure as well and I’m sure there’s some pretty negative influences that it causes.
