Future Trends in the Prevalence of Severe Activity Limitations in Developed Countries

Warren C. Sanderson, Stony Brook University, State University of New York (SUNY)
Sergei Scherbov, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and Vienna Institute of Demography

Life expectancies at older ages continue to increase in most developed countries. But the division of those extra years between those with disabilities and those without remains an important question. We use the harmonized data on disabilities from the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) and predicted life tables from the United Nations to produce forecasts for high income OECD countries of demographic quantities that take disabilities into account. We propose a new dependency ratio called the Adult Disability Dependency Ratio that is the ratio of adults with disabilities to those without. We show that proportions of 60+ populations with disabilities are likely to be only marginally higher in 2045-50 than in 2005-10. We also show that the speed of increase of the Adult Disability Dependency Ratio is around one-fifth as fast as the conventional old age dependency ratio.