The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on life expectancy in the USA: An application of hybrid life expectancy.

Pandemics are, by definition, temporary intervals of substantially increased mortality rates experienced across a wide geographic area. One way of assessing the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA has been to compute the differences in life expectancy at birth during a pandemic year and the year before the pandemic. Such comparisons are misleading because they do not account for the duration of the pandemic.

COVID-19 and excess mortality in Russia: Regional estimates of life expectancy losses in 2020 and excess deaths in 2021.

Accurately counting the human cost of the COVID-19 at both the national and regional level is a policy priority. The Russian Federation currently reports one of the higher COVID-19 mortality rates in the world; but estimates of mortality differ significantly. Using a statistical method accounting for changes in the population age structure, we present the first national and regional estimates of excess mortality for 2021; calculations of excess mortality by age, gender, and urban/rural status for 2020; and mean remaining years of life expectancy lost at the regional level.

Thresholds for clinical practice that directly link handgrip strength to remaining years of life: estimates based on longitudinal observational data.

Objective: Muscle strength is a powerful predictor of mortality that can quickly and inexpensively be assessed by measuring handgrip strength (HGS). What is missing for clinical practice, however, are empirically meaningful cut-off points that apply to the general population and that consider the correlation of HGS with gender and body height as well as the decline in HGS during processes of ageing. This study provides standardised thresholds that directly link HGS to remaining life expectancy (RLE), thus enabling practitioners to detect patients with an increased mortality risk early on.

A divisive hierarchical clustering methodology for enhancing the ensemble prediction power in large scale population studies: the ATHLOS project.

Unlabelled: The ATHLOS cohort is composed of several harmonized datasets of international groups related to health and aging. As a result, the Healthy Aging index has been constructed based on a selection of variables from 16 individual studies. In this paper, we consider additional variables found in ATHLOS and investigate their utilization for predicting the Healthy Aging index.

Development of a common scale for measuring healthy ageing across the world: results from the ATHLOS consortium.

Background: Research efforts to measure the concept of healthy ageing have been diverse and limited to specific populations. This diversity limits the potential to compare healthy ageing across countries and/or populations. In this study, we developed a novel measurement scale of healthy ageing using worldwide cohorts.

Assessing the potential impact of COVID-19 on life expectancy.

Background: The COVID-19 virus pandemic has caused a significant number of deaths worldwide. If the prevalence of the infection continues to grow, this could impact life expectancy. This paper provides first estimates of the potential direct impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on period life expectancy.

Prospective measures of aging for Central and South America.

By conventional measures, it is often remarked that Central and South America is one of the fastest aging geographic regions in the world. In recent years, however, scholars have sought to problematize the orthodox measures and concepts employed in the aging literature. By not taking dynamic changes in life expectancy into account, measures which hold chronological age constant (e.

Choosing between the UN's alternative views of population aging.

Commonly used measures of population aging categorize adults into those who are "old" and those who are not. How this threshold of the stage of "old age" is determined is crucial for our understanding of population aging. We propose that the old age threshold be determined using an equivalency criterion.

Prospects of activity limitations among older adults in 23 low and middle income countries.

Increasing life expectancy and a growing share of older people around the world spotlight the issue of health during additional years of life. Research on trends of proportions of older people with activity limitations for low and middle income countries is sparse. We use data from the World Health Survey and the UN World Population Prospects to predict prevalence of activity limitations for 23 low and middle income countries for the upcoming 30 years.

The Gender Gap in Reaching "Old Age" in the Russian Federation: A Regional Approach.

Reaching older age and longevity in later life is determined by health and mortality across the life course. In the case of Russia, the history of high male mortality skews the interaction between population aging and gender. These differentials can be viewed through a spatial lens in order to both understand their causes, and to better determine policy responses, especially in a federal political system.

Alcohol Drinking and Health in Ageing: A Global Scale Analysis of Older Individual Data through the Harmonised Dataset of ATHLOS.

We investigated the relation between alcohol drinking and healthy ageing by means of a validated health status metric, using individual data from the Ageing Trajectories of Health: Longitudinal Opportunities and Synergies (ATHLOS) project. For the purposes of this study, the ATHLOS harmonised dataset, which includes information from individuals aged 65+ in 38 countries, was analysed ( = 135,440). Alcohol drinking was reflected by means of three harmonised variables: alcohol drinking frequency, current and past alcohol drinker.

Measuring inequalities of development at the sub-national level: From the human development index to the human life indicator.

Despite being one of the most common measures of development, the Human Development Index [HDI] has been much criticized for its consistency, data requirements, difficulty of interpretation and trade-offs between indicators. The 'Human Life Indicator' [HLI] has been proposed as a 'simple effective means' of measuring development and, more specifically, as a viable alternative to the HDI. Reducing inequalities within countries is a core component of the Sustainable Development Goals; yet sub-national HDIs are subject to the same criticisms as national level indices (potentially more so).

Subjective length of life of European individuals at older ages: Temporal and gender distinctions.

This paper examines how older individuals living in 9 European countries evaluate their chances of survival. We use survey data for the years 2004 and 2015 to construct population-level gender-specific subjective length of life (or subjective life expectancy) in people between 60 and 90 years of age. Using a specially designed statistical approach based on survival analysis, we compare people's estimated subjective life expectancies with those actually observed.

Is half the world's population really below 'replacement-rate'?

A perennial activity of demographers is to estimate the percentage of the world's population which is above or below the 'replacement rate of fertility' [RRF]. However, most attempts to do so have been based upon, at best, oversimplified, or at worst, simply incorrect assumptions about what RRF actually is. The objective of this paper is to calculate the proportion of the world's population living in countries with observed period total fertility rates [TFR] below the respective calculated RRF, rather than the commonly used measure of 2.

Better way to measure ageing in Oceania that takes life expectancy into account.

Objective: The aim of the study was to improve the measurement of ageing in Oceania taking into account characteristics of populations and, in particular, changes in life expectancy.

Method: Using past and projected life tables, we calculated prospective old age dependency ratios (POADRs) to 2060, placing the boundary to old age at a moving point with a fixed remaining life expectancy (RLE) for thirteen territories of Oceania.

Results: In some territories, POADRs grow less rapidly than old age dependency ratios (OADRs).

The inverse relationship between life expectancy-induced changes in the old-age dependency ratio and the prospective old-age dependency ratio.

Unlike other biological populations, the human population is experiencing long-run increases in life expectancy. Those lead to changes in age compositions not typical for other biological populations. Sanderson and Scherbov (2015a) demonstrated that, in many countries in Europe, faster increases in life expectancy lead to faster population aging when measured using the old-age dependency ratio and to slower population aging when measured using the prospective old-age dependency ratio that employs a dynamic old-age threshold.

Future trends in the prevalence of severe activity limitations among older adults in Europe: a cross-national population study using EU-SILC.

Objective: To project the proportion of population 65+ years with severe long-term activity limitations from 2017 to 2047.

Design: Large population study.

Setting: Population living in private households of the European Union (EU) and neighbouring countries.

Probabilistic population aging.

We merge two methodologies, prospective measures of population aging and probabilistic population forecasts. We compare the speed of change and variability in forecasts of the old age dependency ratio and the prospective old age dependency ratio as well as the same comparison for the median age and the prospective median age. While conventional measures of population aging are computed on the basis of the number of years people have already lived, prospective measures are computed also taking account of the expected number of years they have left to live.

Combined Measures of Upper and Lower Body Strength and Subgroup Differences in Subsequent Survival Among the Older Population of England.

Objective: To provide an example of a new methodology for using multiple characteristics in the study of population aging and to assess its usefulness.

Method: Using the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA), we investigate three characteristics of each person 60 to 85 years old, by level of education, hand-grip strength in 2004 (measured in kilos), chair rise speed in 2004 (measured in rises per minute), and whether the person survived from 2004 to 2012. Because the three characteristics are measured in different units, we convert them into a common metric, called alpha-ages.

New Approaches to the Conceptualization and Measurement of Age and Aging.

Objective: Most studies of population aging focus on only one characteristic of people: their chronological age. Many important characteristics of people vary with age, but age-specific characteristics also vary over time and differ from place to place. We supplement traditional measures of aging with new ones that consider the changing characteristics of people.

Better way to measure ageing in East Asia that takes life expectancy into account.

Aim: The aim of the study was to improve the measurement of ageing taking into account characteristics of populations and in particular changes in life expectancy.

Method: Using projected life tables, we calculated prospective old age dependency ratios (POADRs) to 2060, placing the boundary to old age at a moving point with a fixed remaining life expectancy (RLE) for all countries of East Asia.

Results: POADRs grow less rapidly than old age dependency ratios (OADRs).

Faster increases in human life expectancy could lead to slower population aging.

Counterintuitively, faster increases in human life expectancy could lead to slower population aging. The conventional view that faster increases in human life expectancy would lead to faster population aging is based on the assumption that people become old at a fixed chronological age. A preferable alternative is to base measures of aging on people's time left to death, because this is more closely related to the characteristics that are associated with old age.