Changing the concept of population aging
Specialists of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) Warren Sanderson and Sergey Scherbov, specializing in population studies, argue that age is not just the number of years a person has lived. As part of their latest work, they completely revised the approach used by demographers to study aging at the population level, and developed a new set of methods, the use of which gives a more complete picture of the impact of population aging on society.
Previously, demographic studies on aging used only one characteristic of a person – his chronological age. The new approach involves the use of a set of characteristics that change with age, including life expectancy, health status, level of cognitive function and other parameters.
Until now, demographers have not used these parameters to study populations and society, they have all been replaced by the age of a person. However, as people's life expectancy increases, the correlation between age and health status, as well as other characteristics, changes very much.
According to Shcherbov, previously people were considered old from the age of 65. However, today's 65-year-old can in many aspects of physical and mental condition correspond to a 55-year-old man who lived 49-50 years ago.
The authors demonstrated that the recommendations prescribed to aging people vary significantly depending on which characteristics of a person are evaluated. Shcherbov argues that different approaches to the assessment of aging are needed for different purposes. Aging is a multidimensional phenomenon and due to the change in the concept of aging at the population level, the study provided a base that provides a much more detailed and realistic picture of the aging of the modern human population.
Article by Sanderson W. C. et al. The Characteristics Approach to the Measurement of Population Aging is published in the journal Population and Development Review.
Evgeniya Ryabtseva
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of IIASA: Reconceptualizing the study of population aging.
19.12.2013