A global analysis of adaptation to societal aging across low-, middle- and high-income countries using the Global Aging Society Index

Abstract

We have previously presented a multidimensional Aging Society Index, a weighted summation of five domains central to successful adaptation to societal aging: well-being, productivity and engagement, equity, cohesion and security, as a tool to assess countries’ adaptation to demographic transformation. As the index was based on data from developed countries and some of the individual metrics or weightings may not be well suited for application to low- and middle-income countries, we here present the scores on a modified index (Global Aging Society Index) on 143 countries distributed across the span of economic development. Only 5 out of 143 (3.5%) countries had higher scores for women than men. Countries with the most notable gender differences were primarily low-income countries. The multidimensional index permits cross-national comparisons and may facilitate the identification of targets for developing policies and programs to enhance the likelihood that older persons will age successfully. The authors score and rank the adaptation to societal aging across 143 countries using a newly developed index called the Global Aging Society Index, which may be helpful to identify targets for the development of policies and programs to enhance the likelihood that older people will age successfully.