How The Lives Of Seniors In The U.S. Match Up Against The Rest Of The World

Older adults in the U.S. are better off, on average, than those in other countries, according to a new index developed by researchers at Columbia University and the University of Southern California. However, while U.S. seniors do relatively well by quality of life measures such as social connections at work and across generations, they fall in the middle of the pack when it comes to physical well-being and financial and personal security.  And, not surprisingly, the gap between those doing well and those doing relatively poorly is greater in the U.S. than in many other developed countries.

The newly-developed Global Aging Index takes a high level look at five key physical, social, and financial measures.  A sample analysis of the data shows that Norway and Sweden are coping best with the challenges of their aging populations, with the U.S., the Netherlands and Japan close behind. By this index, nations such as Hungary and Poland lag well behind.

 

The five elements of the index are: productivity and engagement in and out of the workplace, physical well-being, retirement security and physical safety, social connections including across generations, and the gaps in well-being and economic security between the haves and have-nots. Each of these domains includes measures of health, and economic and social well-being.

Population differences

Building trans-national indexes such as this is not easy. This one relies on three different sources of basic data-- the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) in the U.S., the Survey of Health and Retirement in Europe (SHARE),and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). While each is credible, they are all somewhat different from one another. Thus, comparing data can be challenging.

The countries in the index also are quite different demographically. For instance, the populations of Germany and Japan are much older than the U.S., thus those countries have much greater challenges as they respond to their aging populations.

If the U.S. scores higher than Japan in social connectedness, does that mean the U.S. is doing something better? Or is it simply a reflection of the fact that 27% of Japanese are 65 and older compared to 15% of Americans? And is the U.S. headed toward the same problems when one-quarter of its population tops 65? That will happen in about two decades, in case you were wondering.




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