21 March 2017
Madrid, Spain

Demography today: Are the 40s really the new 30s?

Sergei Scherbov was invited to give a lecture about new methods of measuring population aging developed at IIASA at the Spanish National Research Council.

Elderly man using mobile smart phone and laptop © mrmohock/shutterstock

Elderly man using mobile smart phone and laptop © mrmohock/shutterstock

The lecture will be part of the Postgraduate Training Program on Demography, Statistics and Health, the H2020 training program LONGPOP on longitudinal registers and the Lecture Series "Demography today" that is organized at the Spanish National Research Council, for the 10th time. The Program intends to offer a good opportunity for students and young researchers to meet specialist and well-known scholars from Spain and other countries. 

World Population Program Deputy Director Sergei Scherbov was invited to present new ways to redefine old age. For many years, Scherbov has conducted research in the field of aging and developed new measures of age and aging together with colleagues. He is currently principal investigator of the Reassessing Ageing from a Population Perspective (Re-Ageing) project at the World Population Program at IIASA that, among other things, ascertains the extent to which advanced societies are actually aging in multiple dimensions, including health, cognitive abilities, and longevity.

Since the Lecture Series are sponsored by a Bank Foundation FBBVA, the lectures will take place at their Headqueartes on the Palacio del Marqués de Salamanca which is nearby Cibeles Square in Central Madrid for the general public. The lecture will take place on Tuesday, 21 March 2017, at 7pm. The lecture will be recorded and available online.

For more information please visit the event website.

Abstract

Remeasuring ageing: Are the 40s really the new 30s?

Traditional measures for aging have been in use for many decades. They are widely applied by interested parties from scientists to politicians and are used in many national and international organizations. These measures provide the fundamental inputs into the analysis of population aging and into other related fields. Because they do not take into account changes in people's characteristics such as improvements in life expectancy and health, these measures are becoming increasingly inappropriate for both scientific and policy analysis. In this presentation the characteristics approach to measuring of population aging is introduced. A number of examples of new measures of population aging using characteristics, such as remaining life expectancy, health, normal public pension age, and hand-grip strength are provided. Aging look less rapid applying  the characteristics approach, compared with traditional ones. For some regions, almost no aging occurred in the recent past. Supplementing chronological age with measures  that take into account the changing characteristics of people allows us to analyze aging more comprehensively and more accurately.


Print this page

Last edited: 14 March 2017

CONTACT DETAILS

Sergei Scherbov

Distinguished Emeritus Research Scholar Social Cohesion, Health, and Wellbeing Research Group - Population and Just Societies Program

IIASA Re-Aging Project

Lecture series flyer

Policy Brief

Analyzing Population Aging from a New Perspective

PUBLICATIONS

Demographic Data Sheets

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Phone: (+43 2236) 807 0 Fax:(+43 2236) 71 313