Growing Old Together? The Sex Gap in Population Ageing and the Influence of Survival

Tabitha Scott , University of Vienna & Australian National University
Vladimir Canudas-Romo, Australian National University

Population ageing is one of the most significant population phenomena of this century. Across time and populations, females are, on average, older than males, a trend that is underexplored in the literature. This study presents the sex gap in population ageing, measured with the population mean age, and seeks to understand how it is related to sex differences in mortality. A parallel measure to the population mean age is the “life table mean age”, which uses the life table survival function as its main input, as opposed to the observed population counts used in the population mean age. The sex gap in each of the means, population and life table, reveal similar trends over time. Similarly, the age-decomposition of the sex gap of the means resemble each other, with a large sex difference above age 60. Finally, cohort variable-r decomposition of changes in the population mean age further confirms that historical changes in survivorship are the main contributor to the sex gap in the population mean age for most studied populations. This study contributes to the literature by showing that the sex gap in population ageing can be accounted for by sex differences in mortality at older ages.

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 Presented in Session P6. Health, Mortality, and Ageing 2