In Europe and other developed regions of the world, life expectancy has increased significantly in recent decades and continues to increase. As people live longer, they also stay healthier for longer. But most studies of population ageing focus on only one characteristic of people: their chronological age. The implicit assumption is that other characteristics relevant to population ageing do not change over time and place. But clearly, they do. 65-year-olds today generally have higher remaining life expectancies and are healthier than their counterparts in previous generations—which is reflected, in many countries, in rising ages of eligibility for public pensions. Many important characteristics of people vary with age, but age-specific characteristics also vary over time and differ from place to place. Focusing on only one aspect of the changes entailed in population ageing but not on all the others provides a limited picture of the process, one that is often not appropriate for either scientific study or policy analysis.
The conference will be devoted to new ways of measuring ageing that more accurately represent the real world. These new metrics for population ageing will include factors such as life expectancy, health, disability, cognition and the ability to work—measures that explain how people live and what they need, not just the number of years they have lived. The economic implications of these new measures of age will be also discussed.
Topics of interest include the following:
- Life-table-based measures
- Measures based on subjective life expectancy and survival probabilities
- Measures based on self-reported physical conditions
- Measures based on biomarkers
- Measures based on cognitive functioning
- Economic implications of the new measures
- Country case studies