Abstract |
Commonly used aging measures such as the proportion of older people, the proportion of people aged less than 15 years, and the aging index (aged-child ratio) are based on a simple head count ratio (HCR). The HCR is a crude measure as it fails to give any idea about the tail distribution of the population age. Here an attempt has been made to develop new aging indices (age gap, age distribution sensitive and generalized) taking into account both tails of the population age distribution i.e., distribution of the population aged under fifteen and over sixty. These new indices have been applied to the Bangladesh population based on data collected from secondary sources: the international data base, US Census Bureau and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), for the years 1961, 1981 and 2001 and for some selected Asian countries for 1960, 1980 and 2000 using data from the international UN data base. Conventional aging indices have also been calculated and compared with new ones. Cross-country analysis has also been performed to study the sensitivity of aging indices. Analysis shows an increasing in the speed of aging and new indices indicate the process is faster than conventional ones. For example, relative increases in the speed of aging in 2001 compared to 1981 for conventional and new aging indices (aged-young age gap and aged-young distribution sensitive) are 28.97, 39.19 and 42.04% respectively. The findings also indicate that population aging at the peak is not clear but at the base it is evident. Again the aging process with respect to sex and urban-rural dwelling is also different. From cross-country analysis it is found that the new indices are more sensitive than conventional ones. |