Scientists find new ways  for policy makers to plan for aging

Sept. 10, 2010 - PRLog -- Scientists find new ways  for policy makers to plan for aging

According to an article that appeared in the September 10th issue of Science,  government policy-makers and others have been misled about  aging because they have used inaccurate measures.  The authors, Warren Sanderson and Sergei Scherbov, show that the main measures used to support policies on aging, show too rapid aging because they ignore the fact that life expectancies are increasing and people are becoming healthier.  Sanderson and Scherbov suggest that very different policies would be formulated if policy-makers were to adjust their aging forecasts for improvements in health and longevity.

Until recently, policy-makers did not have a choice.  There were no forecasts of aging that took longevity into account.  In 2008, however, this changed when Sanderson and Scherbov published  aging measures for all countries in the world that did life expectancy changes into account (http://www.prb.org/pdf08/63.4aging.pdf).  The clearly showed the bias built into the measures that policy-makers use to formulate policies.  In the Science article, they go one step further and show how the aging of countries would be measured if disabilities were taken into account.  Because of improvements in health, these measures provide a much less pessimistic portrait of the effects of aging.

Sanderson and Scherbov conclude their article by saying:
"Population aging will certainly be the source of many challenges in coming
decades. But there is no reason to exaggerate those challenges through mismeasurement."

You can learn more about the seriousness of the bias in conventional measures of aging and how
they affect policies by contacting the authors:


Warren Sanderson at: warrencarl@aol.com

Sergei Scherbov at: sergei007@hotmail.com