Comparison of the light-weighted age vs. stellar mass relation for LEGA-C and SDSS galaxy samples for the whole population (left panels) and for Q and SF galaxies separately (middle and right panels, respectively). The SDSS data include corrections for aperture effects, as well as weights for spectroscopic and volume completeness (see text for details). Top row: Data points show LEGA-C golden (filled black and dark points) and silver samples (filled grey and light points). The contours show the distribution for SDSS DR7 S/N > 10 samples, tracing number density levels that enclose 16, 50, 84, 97.5, 99.8, 99.9% of the total density. Middle row: median values of light-weighted age in bins of stellar mass for LEGA-C golden and silver sample (weighted for volume and spectroscopic completeness) and for SDSS, with the same colour-coding as in the top row. The error bars indicate the (weighted) 16–84 percentiles of the distribution. The solid curves show the fit to the median silver points, with the same functional form adopted in Paper I for the whole population (as Eq. (3) for metallicity) and with a linear function (Eq. (2)) for Q and SF galaxies. The dashed lines show the extrapolation beyond the range of the data. Bottom row: Difference in (linear) age between SDSS median points and LEGA-C (golden and silver) median points, with error bars computed from the error on the medians; the solid lines show the differences between the fitted functions in the middle row. The y-axis range extends to 5 Gyr, which corresponds to the cosmic time elapsed between z = 0.7 and z = 0.1, i.e. roughly the expected age difference under pure passive evolution.