Quantifying ‘Self-Perceived Age’ among Europeans and Americans

Georgia Verropoulou , University of Piraeus
Apostolos Papachristos, University of Piraeus
George Ploubidis, UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies
Cleon Tsimbos, University of Piraeus

Chronological Age is widely used for estimating future survival. However, quantities such as ‘Subjective survival probabilities’ or ‘Biological Age’ predict mortality better than Chronological Age. The aims of the study are to estimate ‘Self-perceived age’ by reference to life tables and to evaluate its validity in comparison with ‘Subjective survival probabilities’ and ‘Biological Age’. We use data from the 6th Wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), the 12th Wave of Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and life tables from the Human Mortality Database (HMD). For the statistical analysis we employ multinomial regression models. Our results indicate that health status and frequency of physical activities imply similar patterns of ‘Self-perceived age’, ‘Subjective survival probabilities’ and ‘Biological Age’. However, the impact of memory is different for Americans and Europeans. ‘Self-perceived age’ can be used as a marker to detect early changes in future life expectancy.

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 Presented in Session 22. Population Dynamics and Mortality