Gender Differences in Active Ageing: Findings from a New Individual-Level Index for European Countries
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Gender Differences in Active Ageing: Findings from a New Individual‑Level Index for European Countries David Steinmayr1 · Doris Weichselbaumer1 · Rudolf Winter‑Ebmer1 Accepted: 12 May 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract We use data from wave 6 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to construct an individual-level index of active ageing for people aged between 50 and 90 years. We develop nine sub-indices for different dimensions, which are then aggregated to the final index. This individual-level index allows to analyze inequalities between age cohorts, dimensions, countries, and other individual-characteristics that are covered by SHARE. We focus on differences between the sexes. Overall women score lower than men with 54.9 index-points compared to 57.7 for men. We present gender differences in active ageing for some sub-populations as a showcase for this new individuallevel index. Keywords Active ageing index · Individual index · SHARE
1 Introduction and Motivation Since 1960, life expectancy at birth in developed countries has gone up from 68 years to about 80 years. Apart from the decline in infant mortality, the cause for this remarkable rise in life expectancy was a continued fall of mortality rates at late old age in many countries thanks to medical innovations. Longer lives pose challenges to policy makers as well as researchers as how to enable active and healthy ageing. The concept of “active ageing” emerged in the 1990s and has the goal to allow people “growing older in good health and as a full member of society, feeling more fulfilled in [their] jobs and social engagements, more independent in [their] daily lives and more engaged as citizens” (Zaidi and Stanton 2015). The WHO defines “active ageing” as the “process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age” (p. 12 World Health Organization 2002). The term “active” captures all kind of activities that include participation in the labour market, as well as participation in society, economic, cultural, spiritual and civic affairs. The concept of active ageing is often used as the theoretical foundation for a policy framework that aims at improving the well-being of older people. However, Paz et al. * Rudolf Winter‑Ebmer [email protected] 1
Johannes Kepler University of Linz, 4040 Linz, Austria
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(2017) point out that active ageing policies are often “gender blind” and do not address the different challenges men and women face in their old age. This is problematic, because “social, cultural, economic, and professional aspects in the course of life affect them in a diverse manner and into their old age” (p. 1 Paz et al. 2017). Over the past years much research focused on how ageing was experienced differently by women and men, not only in terms of life expectancy (Leon 2011; Rochelle et al. 2015), but also in social, health and professional dimensions (Corsi et al. 2010; Foster and Walker 2013).
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