In Depth

On how we should adjust how we measure Aging
Professor Warren Sanderson's recent publication in Science

September 2010

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According to a study published in the prestigious journal Science in its September 10, 2010 issue, by Warren Sanderson, Professor of the Department of Economics, and off campus colleague Sergei Scherbov of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, and the Vienna Institute of Demography, population aging is an international concern, in part because of consequences of coming age-structure changes, e.g., growth in the number of elderly, decline in the number of youth, and accompanying economic and social costs. These expectations are based on conventional measures of aging that link expected phenotypes to fixed chronological ages. But as life expectancies increase and people remain healthy longer, measures based solely on fixed chronological ages can be misleading. Recently published aging forecasts for all countries based on new measures that account for changes in longevity. Here, the authors add new forecasts based on disability status. Both types of forecasts exhibit a slower pace of aging compared with the conventional ones.