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It all depends on the environment you live in.

When there is no immunization against whooping cough in a population, most will have had the illness by the time they are five years old and will remain immune for the rest of their lives because the illness builds up good antibody levels, and because these antibodies are being boosted by frequent contact with the organism.

But we now live in an environment where most children are immunized early in life against whooping cough, giving them important protection against it at an age when it would otherwise be so easily spread by them to their newborn unimmunized siblings whom it could kill.  We must remember that immunization has drastically reduced the impact of whooping cough on our populations.

So nowadays in developed communities there are five groups of people who are relatively susceptible. (And come to think about it, it is almost everybody)

1. Newborns until they have had their primary whooping cough shots (maybe under 5 months)

2. Children who have not been immunized

3. People over perhaps 10 years old but maybe under 50 whose immunization wearing off

4. The over 50s but under 60s (very roughly) who never had the chance of immunization but never got the natural infection as children

5. Those even older who had it as a child but whose antibody levels to whooping cough have fallen very low

The bottom line
It used to be children under 5 who caught it before about 1950. Now it seems to be principally primary school children (5yrs to 11yrs), and mature adults coming a close second. So any age can be affected, but the pattern will vary from place to place.