New Approaches to the Conceptualization and Measurement of Age and Ageing

People’s views on population ageing are influenced by the statistics that they read about it. The statistical measures in common use today were first developed around a century ago, in a very different demographic environment. For around two decades, we have been studying population ageing and have been arguing that its conventional portrayal is misleading. In this chapter, we summarize some of that research, which provides an alternative picture of population ageing, one that is more appropriate for twenty-first century. More details about our new view of population ageing can be found in. (Sanderson and Scherbov 2019). Population ageing can be measured in different ways. An example of this can found in the UN’s Profiles in Ageing, 2017. One way is to report on the forecasted increase in the number of people 60+ years old in the world

Demographics of the Russian Pension Reform

Based on recently developed techniques for improving the estimates of life expectancy and extending the mortality data to old-age, we provide the first ever analysis of demographic implications of the pension reform in Russia in both the cross-sectional and cohort perspectives. Our analysis indicates a strong need to rebalance the pension system but also its acute negative consequences to Russian cohorts. Men are particularly vulnerable to the reform because of their low survival and shorter lifespan. Our study suggests that the reform must be supplemented by extraordinary policies aiming at mitigating the negative consequences of the reform. Comparison of the Russian case with the benchmark case of Sweden illustrates economic benefits of population ageing driven by lifespan extension

Having Ancestors Alive: Trends and Prospects in Ageing Europe

The chapter deals with the projection of families and family networks in Austria with implications for the wider European context. Two projection methods are suggested, which are supplemented by formal demographic analysis based on the model by (Goodman LA, Keyfitz N, Pullum TW: Theor Popul Biol 5:1–27, 1974). Our results suggest that ageing of population compositions in Europe will be accompanied and compensated by improving chances of sustaining healthy family relationships in old age

Introduction

Globally, the twenty-first century will witness rapid population ageing. Already in 2050, one out of five persons in the world, and one out of three in Europe, is expected to be 60 or over (UN 2015). Moreover, we have entered into a new stage of population ageing in terms of its causes, which have altered its consequences. In the first stage, lasting until the middle of the twentieth century in developed countries, population ageing was entirely due to the decline in fertility, with Sweden being commonly used as an example (Coale 1957; Bengtsson and Scott 2010; Lee and Zhou 2017). During this stage, the increase in life expectancy was primarily driven by declines in infant and child mortality. It worked in the opposite direction to the fertility decline, making the population younger since it added more years before, than after retirement (Coale 1957; Lee 1994). In the second stage of population ageing, which is the current situation, population ageing is primarily driven by the increase in life expectancy, which is now due to declining old-age mortality. As a result, more years are added after retirement than in working ages (Lee 1994). Could immigration or an upswing in fertility stop population ageing? The short answer is most likely not. The effect of migration on population aging is generally regarded as minor (Murphy 2017), and since population ageing is a global phenomenon, it will be of no general help anyway. A rapid increase in fertility is improbable and, in any case, an increase would take some 25 years before adding to the labor force. Instead, attention has been focused on how to adapt our social systems to the increasing number of elderly per worker – more so since the increase in the elderly-per-worker ratio came in parallel with a rise in per capita costs for the institutional care, home care, and general health care for the elderly

Including the Smoking Epidemic in Internationally Coherent Mortality Projections

<p>We present a new mortality projection methodology that distinguishes smoking- and non-smoking-related mortality and takes into account mortality trends of the opposite sex and in other countries. We evaluate to what extent future projections of life expectancy at birth (e (0)) for the Netherlands up to 2040 are affected by the application of these components. All-cause mortality and non-smoking-related mortality for the years 1970-2006 are projected by the Lee-Carter and Li-Lee methodologies. Smoking-related mortality is projected according to assumptions on future smoking-attributable mortality. Projecting all-cause mortality in the Netherlands, using the Lee-Carter model, leads to high gains in e (0) (4.1 for males; 4.4 for females) and divergence between the sexes. Coherent projections, which include the mortality experience of the other 21 sex- and country-specific populations, result in much higher gains for males (6.4) and females (5.7), and convergence. The separate projection of smoking and non-smoking-related mortality produces a steady increase in e (0) for males (4.8) and a nonlinear trend for females, with lower gains in e (0) in the short run, resulting in temporary sex convergence. The latter effect is also found in coherent projections. Our methodology provides more robust projections, especially thanks to the distinction between smoking- and non-smoking-related mortality.</p>