This time it's the measurement of old age. The Population Reference Bureau says that we should measure old age not simply by how many years we've lived but also by how many years we will likely live, the latter is referred to as prospective age.
When you use prospective, rather than conventional, age in a key economic and demographic comparison - the ratio of old people to young workers - the ratio improves quite a bit. For example, using the conventional age, the ratio of old to young in 2045 is expected to be 26.5%; with the prospective age measurement, the number drops to 17.7%. There are several other interesting observations in this paper.
1 comment:
Why don't we just stop trying to measure every damn thing? What percentage of old men are cranky and irascible, like me?
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