CSB Working Paper, 2016, 4: Measuring Successful Aging with Respect for What Matters to Older Persons

This paper explores how to measure successful aging in a manner consistent with the preferences of older persons about what matters in their lives. First it considers the extent to which existing objective and subjective measures of successful aging reflect those preferences. It is found that both objective and subjective measures may contradict preferences that are held unanimously by older persons. Subsequently a new measure of successful aging is proposed that is consistent with those prefere…

This paper explores how to measure successful aging in a manner consistent with the preferences of older persons about what matters in their lives. First it considers the extent to which existing objective and subjective measures of successful aging reflect those preferences. It is found that both objective and subjective measures may contradict preferences that are held unanimously by older persons. Subsequently a new measure of successful aging is proposed that is consistent with those preferences. The implementation of the preference-based measure is illustrated with data for 11 European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The proposed measure is found to yield different results than existing objective and subjective measures in terms of how successful aging has evolved between 2007 and 2013, how countries are ranked for successful aging, and the shape of the age distribution of successful aging.