How do I calculate someone's age based on a DateTime type birthday?

An easy to understand and simple solution.

// Save today's date.
var today = DateTime.Today;

// Calculate the age.
var age = today.Year - birthdate.Year;

// Go back to the year in which the person was born in case of a leap year
if (birthdate.Date > today.AddYears(-age)) age--;

However, this assumes you are looking for the western idea of the age and not using East Asian reckoning.

This is a strange way to do it, but if you format the date to yyyymmdd and subtract the date of birth from the current date then drop the last 4 digits you've got the age :)

I don't know C#, but I believe this will work in any language.

20080814 - 19800703 = 280111 

Drop the last 4 digits = 28.

C# Code:

int now = int.Parse(DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMdd"));
int dob = int.Parse(dateOfBirth.ToString("yyyyMMdd"));
int age = (now - dob) / 10000;

Or alternatively without all the type conversion in the form of an extension method. Error checking omitted:

public static Int32 GetAge(this DateTime dateOfBirth)
{
    var today = DateTime.Today;

    var a = (today.Year * 100 + today.Month) * 100 + today.Day;
    var b = (dateOfBirth.Year * 100 + dateOfBirth.Month) * 100 + dateOfBirth.Day;

    return (a - b) / 10000;
}

Here is a test snippet:

DateTime bDay = new DateTime(2000, 2, 29);
DateTime now = new DateTime(2009, 2, 28);
MessageBox.Show(string.Format("Test {0} {1} {2}",
                CalculateAgeWrong1(bDay, now),      // outputs 9
                CalculateAgeWrong2(bDay, now),      // outputs 9
                CalculateAgeCorrect(bDay, now),     // outputs 8
                CalculateAgeCorrect2(bDay, now)));  // outputs 8

Here you have the methods:

public int CalculateAgeWrong1(DateTime birthDate, DateTime now)
{
    return new DateTime(now.Subtract(birthDate).Ticks).Year - 1;
}

public int CalculateAgeWrong2(DateTime birthDate, DateTime now)
{
    int age = now.Year - birthDate.Year;

    if (now < birthDate.AddYears(age))
        age--;

    return age;
}

public int CalculateAgeCorrect(DateTime birthDate, DateTime now)
{
    int age = now.Year - birthDate.Year;

    if (now.Month < birthDate.Month || (now.Month == birthDate.Month && now.Day < birthDate.Day))
        age--;

    return age;
}

public int CalculateAgeCorrect2(DateTime birthDate, DateTime now)
{
    int age = now.Year - birthDate.Year;

    // For leap years we need this
    if (birthDate > now.AddYears(-age)) 
        age--;
    // Don't use:
    // if (birthDate.AddYears(age) > now) 
    //     age--;

    return age;
}