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. METHOD The characteristics approach to measuring of population aging is employed. We provide examples of new measures of population aging using characteristics, such as remaining life expectancy, health, normal public pension age, and hand-grip strength. RESULTS Past and future population aging look less rapid using the characteristics approach, compared with traditional ones. For some regions, almost no aging occurred in the recent past. DISCUSSION Supplementing chronological age with ages that take into account the changing characteristics of people allows us to analyze aging more comprehensively and more accurately.