It is important to have a holistic measure of ageing. Current measures of ageing, such as the dependency ratio, focus solely on the size of the ageing population compared to the working-age population. These measures ignore that successive generations differ in aspects of human and social capital.
In this PhD project, we create a multidimensional measure of ageing that includes not only the size of the aged population but also their human and social capital. We define ageing as ‘prospective age’ which takes into account increases in life expectancy. The new multidimensional measure allows us to conduct demographic projections after accounting for health, income, cognitive and intellectual abilities, inequalities between the young and the old, social participation among the old, old age-friendly external environments, and subjective factors affecting the elderly. This makes it a better measure of ageing scenarios across different countries. We use the new multidimensional measure of ageing to compare current and future scenarios of ageing in Europe and Asia. To do this, we harmonize and use Health and Retirement Surveys from different countries.
