united nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) and above 230 Performance Indicator Elderly people are rarely mentioned in determining social, economic and environmental sustainability advances in countries around the world. There are several indicators that document the progress of population subgroups, but no indicators that target older people.
In lighting class on sustainability indicators – Alexander de SherbininZachary A. Wendling, director of the Center for Integrated Geoscience Information Networks at the Columbia School of Climate, and research director for the Center for Environmental Law and Policy. Environmental Performance Index– Learned how to analyze existing indexes and how to build your own indexes. The Aging Planetary Index (API) is the culmination of these efforts.
First, I thought it was worth wondering why older people are not a staple of SDGS. Perhaps an aging society is a global challenge? After all, the world’s population continues to be a merciless, rising rise, and is expected to peak only by the mid-2080s. However, if you dig deeper, you will see that the age group over 65 shows the fastest growth rate. Developing countries with a concentrated population growth are under great pressure as they face unprecedented double burdens. They are aging faster than developed countries did in their early developmental stages, and they cannot follow a playbook that focuses first on economic development before increasing healthcare systems to manage chronic aged diseases.
Although some institutions have already built aging index, they primarily reflect the perspective of policymakers. The employment rate variables for ages 70-74 years are most prominent in the aggressive aging index by the UN Economic Commission in Europe. Who decided that 70-74 jobs would be desirable? When I created the basic framework for APIs, I decided to reflect what older people actually want. It’s global investigation We concluded that among the elderly, “have energy, happy, capable, and free from pain” is the most important thing. Roughly, they are concerned about happiness and health. Therefore, the first component of the API tracks happiness through self-reported happiness and healthy life expectancy.
Next, we considered important measures to achieve these objectives. For happiness, economic security is undoubtedly the most important facilitator. This is now two APIs. Instead of using the employment rates for old age, I chose to better capture pension compensation and old age poverty. choice. You may not agree that age is a retiree, but you can agree that having enough money is universally desired. Economic security is closely linked to psychological safety. For example, people may continue to work beyond retirement due to social interaction or meaning. Therefore, I also included a self-reported measure of social support and productivity sentiment.
“Maybe aging society is not a global challenge? After all, the world’s population will continue to have a relentless rise that is expected to only peak by the mid-2080s.
Finally, the API in Component 3 focuses on the environment. This is, despite being the heart of happiness, is still overlooked by many indexes. The global burden of illness studydeaths caused by pollution were found to be “a lot greater than deaths from war, terrorism, malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, drugs and alcohol.” Furthermore, such environmental impacts are disproportionately borne by more sensitive elderly people. However, the environment is often lacking across governments and international organizations, perhaps because it is difficult to measure. I used the variables of the year lost to air pollution exposure, lead exposure, and extreme weather events.
After collecting measurements for these criteria, the values ​​of the nine variables were standardized to a common scale (0-1) to allow for comparison. For each country, the final index scores were averaged to obtain a mean of nine variable scores. Countries were then ranked based on this final score.
Within 140 countries, the top 20 were dominated by Northern and Western Europe. The API appears to reflect the country’s global economic rankings (highly correlated with per capita GDP). This helps to increase health, security and environmental resilience as economic resources help promote health care and social welfare systems. That said, I have tested the various explanatory factors outlined in previous research and found stronger correlations between gender inequality and all income levels associated with universal health insurance.
Women accumulate burdens throughout their lives, such as experiencing workplace discrimination and being able to take the brunt of caregiving. One solution to consider is to strengthen the power of women in society, like the Indian experiment Reservations for Village Council Meetings for Women In the 1990s, it could lead to structural investments tailored to women’s needs. Amartia Sen, an advocate for human development, demonstrated that the country does not need to wait for economic prosperity before improving healthcare and education opportunities upstream. Countries achieve them much less.
I hope that, in the end, the API will begin discourse on the challenges of aging. I hope for the dimensions of successful aging and what potential solutions we can offer.
Ng Kah Long is a graduate student in Columbia University’s Quantitative Methods in Social Science Programs. His research interest lies in filling the field of social sciences to solve interesting problems. He is currently a research assistant at the Postal Public Health School in Columbia.
The opinions and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the Columbia School of Climate, the Institute of Earth, or Columbia University.
