Active Ageing Index as an Evidence Base for Developing a Comprehensive Active Ageing Policy in Russia

Abstract

The concept of active ageing shifts the focus of the discussion of the consequences of ageing from negative expectations of a growing burden of public costs to the analysis of opportunities of using the potential of elderly people. This paper is aimed at testing the applicability of international approaches to measure active ageing to the situation in Russia. For this purpose, we use the international Active Ageing Index (AAI), developed by the experts from the European Centre Vienna. The AAI is a multidimensional composite index that consists of 22 indicators and measures the untapped potential of older people in four major areas: (1) employment, (2) participation in society, (3) independent, healthy and secure life, (4) capacity for active ageing. Our empirical estimation of the AAI is based on several Russian and international surveys, which provide relatively high comparability of the AAI results for Russia with EU countries. The results show that the AAI equals 30.9 points, which means about 69 % of unused potential for active ageing of the elderly in Russia, and corresponds to the 18th place in ranking of 29 European countries. Russia performs relatively better in the employment and capacity for active ageing domains. It is in the bottom of the ranking in the independent, healthy and secure life domain.

Introduction

The concept of active ageing introduced by the World Health Organization (WHO)¹ in 1997 and then promoted by other international organizations helps to change the public policy discourse in relation to ageing. According to the WHO definition, active ageing means “the process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation and security in order to improve the quality of life as people age” (WHO 2002). In 2002, the Second World Assembly on Ageing adopted the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, aimed at improving the environment for older persons, strengthening their health, income security, and their active participation in society. The action plan calls for a change in policy and practice in relation to older people in the XXI century with the aim of increasing use of the huge potential of this part of the population. The need to move towards a society for all ages, including through actions at the national level and the implementation of comprehensive strategies for active and healthy aging was highlighted at the Vienna Ministerial Declaration of 2012, adopted by the participants of the Ministerial Conference on Ageing, including Russia.

As a multi-dimensional concept, active ageing is difficult to measure and monitor, however. One of the approaches to assessing the progress in using the capabilities of elderly people and increasing their potential at the national or international level is to develop a composite (multi-dimensional) index. The advantage of international indices is the possibility to compare the situation in the country on a number of dimensions in relation to other countries. However, in composite indices based on many indicators such comparability is often achieved at the expense of loss of accuracy in the evaluation of the multidimensional phenomena under study such as active ageing. In addition, the position of the country in the ranking of a particular index is rather arbitrary. It is influenced by the indicators chosen, the data and the weights used in the index.

The aim of the paper is to test the applicability of international approaches to measure active ageing to the situation in Russia. Cross-countries comparisons will shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of active ageing in Russia, a rapidly ageing middle-income Eastern European economy outside the EU that has experienced an extended mortality crisis and the deep deterioration of social and economic conditions. For this purpose, we use the Active Ageing Index (AAI), developed by the experts from the European Centre Vienna in the framework of project managed by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL) and the Population Unit of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The AAI is an instrument to produce a robust evidence-base on active ageing by measuring unused potentials of older people, “to monitor overall progress with respect to active ageing” (UNECE / European Commission 2015) in order to inform politicians and policy makers about areas of particular concern, and to provide recommendations for improving the statistical database on the elderly population and ageing.

This paper presents the results of the testing of the AAI in Russia, using various statistical and sociological data. We attempt to answer the following research questions: 1) to what extent can the international approach to measure active ageing be applied to the Russian context and data? 2) To what extent are the results obtained for Russia on the basis of existing data sources comparable with other countries that utilize the AAI? 3) Do indicators used in the AAI methodology adequately measure the potential of active ageing in Russia?

The paper has the following structure. The next, second, section starts with a short discussion of the existing literature on active ageing and its measurement. The third section provides some basic facts about peculiarities of Russia’s population ageing that shall be taken into account in the active ageing analysis. In the fourth section we describe data and our approach to constructing the AAI for Russia. The results and their discussion are in the fifth section. We compare Russia’s position in the AAI ranking with EU countries as a whole, and according to various domains. We also discuss an important issue of the sensitivity of the indicators included in the AAI to the source of data and definition used. In conclusion, we describe the main data problems related to applying the AAI methodology in Russia and explain how the AAI can be used as an evidence base for developing an ageing-related policy in Russia.

Literature Review

Active ageing is a relatively new concept that helps to shift the focus of the political discussion of the consequences of ageing from the negative expectations of the growing burden of the elderly to an understanding of the potential of this age group. World Health Organization (WHO), which has introduced this term into the academic and policy discourse, defines active aging as “the process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age”, which “applies to both individuals and population groups” (WHO 2002).

The WHO definition highlights several important features of active ageing. First, it is a holistic and multidimensional concept, which should not be reduced to healthy lifestyles (“healthy ageing”) or economic activities (“productive ageing”) (Boudiny 2013; Walker 2014). According to the WHO, “health” includes physical, psychological and social well-being, “participation” – an array of activities in the social, economic, cultural, civil and spiritual life of society in which the elderly participate in addition to the paid labor force. “Security” involves the creation of physically and socially safe and secure environment that guarantees a stable income and, if applicable, rewarding employment (WHO 2002).

Second, in line with the WHO definition, the ultimate purpose of active ageing is to increase older people’s wellbeing and their quality of life. The WHO defines quality of life as “an individual’s perception of his or her position in life in the context of the culture and value system where they live, and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns. It is a broad ranging concept, incorporating in a complex way a person’s physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships, personal beliefs and relationship to salient features in the environment” (WHO 2002).

Third, by defining active aging as a “process of optimizing opportunities” the WHO places ageing in the framework of the life course paradigm. Previously education and training conducted in young ages, was replaced by work in middle ages, and then followed by retirement (leisure). To the contrary, active ageing provides an “age-integrated paradigm”, according to which, education and training, work and leisure may (and actually shall) co-exist during the whole life course (Walker and Maltby 2012).

Fourth, as a process of enhancing opportunities active ageing differs from previously developed concept of successful ageing, which required from older people to keep health status and activity patterns typical of middle age (Walker 2014). To the contrary, active ageing covers the entire population, including the elderly, who, because of their age or particular circumstances, have become ill, disabled, frail and require long-term care (WHO 2002).

There is no general approach to measuring active ageing. Given its multidimensional nature, one of the common approaches is to use composite indicators (or indices). Composite indicator is an aggregated measure (or index) formed by certain individual indicators and weights used to specify a relative importance of individual indicators (Nardo et al. 2005; Saltelli 2007). Composite indicators are widely used in economics and social sciences; there are numerous international multidimensional indices measuring human development, well-being, quality of life, etc. There are several recent attempts to apply the index method for active ageing estimation.

For instance, in Russia, there is an attempt to measure active ageing for policy-making purposes on the basis of multi-dimensional methodology applied to one data source (Zasimova and Sheluntcova 2014]. The authors conducted empirical research based on the Russian data of the Study of Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) and the WHO concept of active ageing. Later, they extended their analysis to Mexico, India, and China also participated in SAGE. The three dimensions they explored include health, participation and society. Reliance on one data source provides interesting insights on how different dimensions of active ageing are related. It also gives authors an opportunity to classify respondents according to their activity status. However, to our mind, an attempt to relate criteria of active ageing to characteristics of certain people contradicts the all-embracing feature of the active ageing in accordance with the WHO definition. Besides, due to its strong dependence on one data source, empirical definitions of active ageing components in this study are determined by the possibilities of the survey, which does not always provide the best possible definitions. In part because of the data, the study is focused more on the older people health status analysis than on the environmental and social conditions and the potential of elderly people to contribute to the economy and society. In addition, the comparative abilities of this approach are limited to the number of countries participated in SAGE, which are sometimes very different from Russia in terms of their demographic, economic and social situations.

There are also two international composite indices developed by orders of international governmental and non-governmental organizations. The first is the Global AgeWatch Index (GAWI)² developed by HelpAge International in 2013 with the aim of measuring older people well-being and quality of life (Help Age International 2013). In 2013 the GAWI covered 91 and in 2014–96 countries out of total of 193 countries, including Russia. The GAWI consists of 13 indicators grouped in four domains, including: (1) income security, (2) health status, (3) employment and education, and (4) enabling environment. The first two domains assess different dimensions of wellbeing and quality of life, the third domain measures older people ability to contribute to the economy, and the last fourth domain estimates to what extent country’s environment supports active ageing now and in the future.

The need to expand the GAWI coverage to as many countries of the world as possible leads to the fact that the data used are not always best to capture empirically the definition of active ageing. For instance, income security domain includes GDP per capita indicator, which is certainly available in all countries covered by GAWI, but not the best indicator to describe wellbeing or quality of life, since the relation between country’s economic development and older people’s wellbeing is not straight. Besides, enabling environment domain includes an indicator of civic freedom that might be sensitive to the data source and question wording and is not directly related to the active ageing concept. Two indicators of life expectancy and healthy life expectancy taken together as integer values with higher weights worsen substantially positions of countries with high mortality. Currently the GAWI estimations are based on international data sets drawn from the United Nations, the World Bank, WHO, International Labour Organization, UNESCO and the Gallup World Poll.

The GAWI methodology is complex; index values are the weighted geometric mean of the four domains, each of which is taken with the same weight. Indicators of pension income coverage, life expectancy, healthy life expectancy and psychological wellbeing have higher weights than the other, taken with the same weights. Besides, individual indicator values are normalized using the minimum-maximum adjustment principle to avoid extreme values.

These methodological peculiarities hamper interpretation of the GAWI results and its dynamic comparisons. Furthermore, not all nuances of the GAWI methodology are published and not all data can be obtained that prevent replication of the results. Our expert analysis of the GAWI data, methodology and results indicates that the results obtained for Russia require additional verification and correction. However, the positive aspects of GAWI should be also noted- firstly, it has a significant informational value, attracting the attention of politicians and the public to the issue of active ageing, and secondly, the data for this indicator is available for a wide range of countries outside EU and the developed countries’ group, providing information on different aspects of active ageing across the world.

The second multidimensional composite index is an Active Ageing Index (AAI), initiated by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL) and the Population Unit of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Its methodology was developed in 2012 by experts from the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research (Zaidi et al. 2013). To provide data replicability in prospect, the methodology was slightly changed in 2014, some data sources/ questions used to calculate individual indicators were replaced (Zaidi 2014).

For the purpose of constructing the AAI experts define active ageing as “the situation where people are able to live healthy, independent and secure lives as they age and thus continue to participate in the formal labour market as well as engage in other unpaid productive activities (such as volunteering and care provision to family members” (Zaidi et al. 2013). The AAI is aimed at measuring the unused potential of elderly people. In contrast to the GAWI, this index was not initially designed to assess the well-being of the elderly or their quality of life.

Hence, the AAI consists of 22 indicators and measures the untapped potential of older people in four major areas: (1) employment, (2) participation in society, (3) independent, healthy and secure living, and (4) capacity and enabling environment for active ageing (UNECE / European Commission 2015). The first three domains measure current situation with active ageing, while the last fourth domain provides an opportunity to evaluate factors that can support or impede active ageing in future. The authors of the AAI underscore the importance and novelty of the fourth domain, which as they write relates to the Sen’s capability concept (Zaidi et al. 2013). All single indicators are positive coefficients varying from 0 to 100, where the maximum value corresponds to the best conditions for active ageing. There is a system of implicit and explicit weights applied to each indicator within domains and to domains within the whole index (Fig. 1). The overall value of the AAI is estimated as the weighted arythmetic mean of the four domain values. The strengths of the AAI include the opportunity to use several data sources to better capture the dimensions of active ageing, its comparative and dynamic nature, and a possibility to be used for policy development.

Fig. 1

The structure of AAI

Initially, the AAI covered 27 EU countries; later Croatia was included in the ranking. However, the detailed description of its methodology, empirical definitions of all indicators and data sources allows to reproduce the AAI results in the countries outside the EU. Up to now there is only one attempt to apply the AAI methodology to a country outside the EU - in Georgia (UNECE 2012). However, the results obtained for Georgia were not always comparable with the EU countries due to serious data limitations (UNECE 2012).

Russia’s Context in Ageing

As many other countries in the European region, Russian population is ageing rapidly. The proportion of population aged 55 years old and over (the borders of calculating the majority of indicators of AAI) will increase, in accordance with the UN World Population Prospects (medium variant), from 25.1 % in 2010 up to 34.8 % in 2050.

The main driver of the ageing is low fertility, while life expectancy of Russian women and particularly men remains very low (76 years at birth for women and merely 65 years for men in 2013 according to Federal State Statistics Service³). Excessive mortality of adult population reduces speed of ageing and makes Russian population younger than population of many European countries. Furthermore, the age structure of the older population is shifted toward the younger ages. According to 2010 Census data, more than ¾ of the population of 55 years old and over is younger than 75 years old; moreover, almost every second person 55+ is younger than 65 years old.

The gender gap in life expectancy remains significant; even at the age of 60 women on average live six years longer than men. Consequently, there are 22.1 million women aged 55 years old and older and only 12.8 million men. The ratio of women to men increases from 1.4 in the age of 55 to 59 years old up to 4.3 for people 85 and above years.

Despite asignificant improvements in reducing mortality achieved in recent years, the situation with morbidity and mortality of Russian population remains dramatic not only in comparison with EU countries but even with non-European countries with comparable level of economic development. Number of deaths at working age is still extremely high in Russia (8.6 per 1000 persons for men and 2.4 for women). In 2014, near half of all deaths in Russia were caused by diseases of the circulatory system, 15.3 % by neoplasms and 9.1 % by external causes. The age-standardized death rates for these reasons are much higher than in the EU; the largest difference is in the middle working ages (Fig. 2). Russian surveys⁴ also record significant lag of Russian healthy life expectancy indicator even behind the Central Europe and the Baltics. There are many reasons of the excessive mortality of Russian population (Shkolnikov et al. 2001; Shkolnikov et al. 2004; Shkolnikov et al. 2006; Shkolnikov et al. 2013), and among others is low health care expenditures. Public expenditure on health as a share of GDP is nearly two times lower in Russia, than in EU countries (Fig. 3).

Fig. 2

Age-standardized death rates (SDR) by main death causes in Russia comparing to the EU average, times, 2010

Fig. 3

Total health expenditure and general government expenditure as % of GDP, 2013

Dramatic situation with health and life expectancy of Russian population is particularly striking taking into account relatively high level of education of the whole population and of the elderly (Shkolnikov et al. 2006; Marmot et al. 1984). According to 2010 census data, 18.9 % of the Russian people aged 55 years old or more have higher education or higher levels of education, 53.6 % - professional education and higher levels of education. For the group of 55–64 years old it is 22.4 % and 66.3 % correspondingly.

Coverage of older people by pension system is almost universal in Russia. Normal pension age is 55 years old for women and 60 years old for men. Insurance old-age pension (labor pension from 2002 to 2014) is paid to people of pension age with at least 6 years of contribution record (5 years from 2002 to 2014; minimum contribution record is increasing up to 15 years from 2024). Moreover, according to 2015 pension reform to be eligible for an insurance old-age pension, a person must have 6.6 special points (calculated from the individual contribution) in 2015 (increasing up to 30 points from 2025). Still, some people can get old-age pension earlier if they are employed in hazardous conditions. In addition to old-age insurance pensions, there are disability and survivors’ insurance pensions. Consequently, actual pension age, 54 years for men and 52 years for women, is lower than official (Maleva and Sinyavskaya 2010). Finally, if a person is not eligible for any kind of insurance pension she can get social pension five years later, i.e. women from 60 years old or later and men from 65 years old. Legislation does not require pensioners to retire; there are no limits on incomes of working pensioners.

The average pension benefit declined from 35.7 % of the average monthly wage (gross) in 2010 to 33.1 % in 2014 that is relatively low by international standards. In relation to Russian official poverty line – subsistence minimum of pensioners – average pension was 1.6 times higher. Furthermore, according to Russian legislation all not working pensioners with pension benefits below regional subsistence minimum shall receive additional payments to increase their monthly incomes to the poverty line. As a result, pensioners in Russia have on average lower risks of absolute poverty comparing to adult population and particularly children (Sinyavskaya 2012).

Although the Russian government expresses concern with the ageing of the population, until recently there was no comprehensive policy framework aimed at this issue (Sidorenko and Zaidi 2012). Sectoral policies are limited mostly to the areas of pensions, employment and social care. Hence, ageing is discussed negatively in the context of social policy. However, in August 2014, the Russian president assigned the Government to develop a joint action strategy for older people in order to identify additional opportunities for an active and fulfilling life after retirement^{5 ,. 6} On February 5, 2016 the Russian government adopted the Strategy of action for senior citizens in the Russian Federation until 2025. It covers a broad range of areas including education and employment, social protection, social and health care, production of particular goods and services, supporting accessible environment, development of charity for seniors and volunteer work of elderly people, etc. One of the important issues is developing the action plan of the Strategy and monitoring of the results, which includes development of a set of indicators and possibly a composite index of older people wellbeing. This work can rely on the results of the research presented in this paper.

Data and Methodology

Data

Estimations of the AAI for EU members are based on the following data sources: EU Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS, 2010, and 2011) European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS, 2010), EU Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC, 2010), European Social Survey (ESS, 2010), Eurostat ICT Survey (2010), European Health and Life Expectancy Information system (EHLEIS, 2010). Russia participated only in ESS.

In order to collect data for the AAI indicators for Russia, we reviewed the available surveys and censuses. We applied the following criteria to evaluate the data source: (1) questionnaire has at least some information necessary to calculate AAI; (2) data are of good quality (we know sampling and fieldwork procedures, sample is representative at the federal level, fieldwork company is reliable); (3) it is a repeated or longitudinal survey so that information can be used for different years to observe dynamics; and (4) it is an international study and the same indicator can be constructed for other countries that participated in the AAI.

The final list of the surveys selected for the AAI estimations includes the following:

• (1) Russian Population Census (2010, microdata: 35,869,670 respondents aged 55+);

• (2) 3rd wave of Russian Generations and Gender Survey (GGS, 2011: 4276 respondents aged 55+);

• (3) “Comprehensive Monitoring of Living Conditions of the Population” (CMLC, 2011: 6872 respondents aged 55+);

• (4) two rounds of European Social Survey (ESS, round 5, 2010: 773 respondents aged 55+; round 6, 2012: 750 respondents aged 55+ (after weighting with post-stratification weight including design weight );

• (5) Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS, round 19, 2010: 4539 respondents aged 55+);

• (6) Data from Human Mortality Database (HDM), 2010;

• (7) Data of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), 2010.

The comparison of the questions in the surveys used for the European AAI and Russian AAI construction are in Table 6 in the Appendix.

Data and Questions to Construct Indicators

Employment

Since we have no access to the microdata of Russian Labour Force Surveys (RLFS) and Rosstat publications based on RLFS provide only agregated information on the employment rates of peole aged 55–59, 60 to 72 years old, at this stage of our research CMLC (2011) is used instead. Unlike the Russian LFS, CMLC collects information about the employment of people older than 72 years old and microdata are available. The definition of employment in CLMC is the same as the definition used in EU-LFS. There are already two waves of CMLC conducted in 2011 and 2014. Another potential source of information is RLMS conducted annually. However, the definition of employment in RLMS is different from that used in RLFS and CMLC and respectively in EU-LFS.

Results of calculation show that for some reasons CMLC underestimates the levels of employment of older population (Table 1). Despite the difference in definitions the dicrepancy of employment rates of people aged 55–59 years old is lower between RLFS and RLMS than between RLFS and CMLC that use similar definitions. Therefore, for further estimations, we will try to get an access to the detailed information provided by the RLFS data.

Table 1 Individual indicators of Russian AAI (in points)

Participation in Society

Russia did not participate in EQLS, which was used for estimating indicators of this domain. Hence, voluntary activity can be calculated on the basis of CMLC or ESS-2012. However, the question of CMLC measures the membership in the organizations, not just participation in their activity, which can under-report the real situation. For this reason we use ESS-2012. Nevertheless, while the question in the English version of the ESS questionnaire is very close to that used in the EQLS, its Russian version is slightly different: “In the past 12 months, how often did you get involved in voluntary socially beneficial activities or work for voluntary or charitable organizations?”. Thus, those involved in informal volunteer activities can also give positive responses that can slightly inflate Russia’s results. Table 1 provides comparisons of the results obtained from CMLC and ESS on this issue. Also, later in this paper we discuss the potential biases arisen due to the differences of empirical definitions in EQLS and ESS (Table 3).

It is hard to provide a comparable indicator of the care for children or grandchildren due to the lack of similar questions in available databases. CMLC measures “everyday care without payment for your own and other people’s children”, which significantly underestimates the value of the indicator. Therefore, a complex proxy indicator on the basis of GGS was introduced. It combines questions on help looking after grandchildren and on participation in child care⁷ equally or more than the respondent’s partner. However, GGS does not cover care for children living outside the household or children older than 14 years.

Care for older adults can be also calculated in CMLC or GGS. CMLC does not take into account the existence of kin relationships between the respondent and the object of aid and focuses on daily care, while GGS measures “regular care provision during last 12 months”. Despite these differences between the surveys, the attained values of the indicator are very close (Table 1). For other criteria listed above, we choose GGS to measure this indicator.

We use ESS to estimate political participation in Russia. The wording of the question is very close to the one used in the original methodology.

Independent, Healthy and Secure Life

The examined surveys, unlike EQLS, do not include the general question about the frequency of physical exercise. Based on RLMS (2010) data, we construct this question by summing up the frequencies of several physical activities (jogging, skiing, swimming, dancing, gym, sport games and others⁸) per month. We consider the elderly as physically active if they participate in any of the physical activities 16 times and more per month (every day or every other day).

None of the examined surveys had questions equal to the AAI on access to health and dental care. So we compared the estimations based on two questions: 1) on the problem of unavailability of public and municipal health care services and 2) the presence of a situation when a person needed a medical treatment or consultation with the doctor, but did not apply to the medical organization. For the final index we chose the second question for estimations.

he indicator of independent living arrangements can be estimated on basis of either Russian Population Census (2010) or RLMS (2010). The full coverage of the population by Census guarantees results that are more accurate.

We use RLMS to estimate relative median income and the level of poverty risk and GGS to estimate material deprivation. The GGS questionnaire includes 8 of 9 items of the indicator of material deprivation except “to face unexpected expenses”. Instead of this item we use the question: “Speaking about household income how easily do you make both ends meet?”

ESS (2010) is used to measure physical safety both in European and Russian AAI.

No study examined had a question about attending educational events within the last four weeks preceding the survey (to measure lifelong learning), so two variants of questions from CMLC and RLMS were used. In CMLC, respondents were asked about visiting courses and other kinds of additional education at the current moment. RLMS includes a question about educational events within the last 12 months. Surprisingly, both sources give almost the same figures (Table 1). Finally, we use the RLMS question covering definite time period.

Capacity for Active Ageing

The indicator of remaining life expectancy at 55 (divided by 50 to calculate the proportion of life expectancy achievement in the target of 105 years of life expectancy) is calculated using the data from the Human Mortality Database (HDM).

The share of healthy life years in the remaining life expectancy in Russia at age 55 is estimated using the data of The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).⁹

Mental well-being is measured on basis of ESS. Five questions concerning ways the respondents might have felt or behaved during the past week were chosen: [“a) ...you were happy? b) ...you felt calm and peaceful? c) ...you had a lot of energy? d) …your sleep was restless? e) …you enjoyed life?”]. Four possible answers (and one “Don’t know”) were recorded in the following way: from 0 for “none or almost none of the time” to 3 for “all or almost all of the time”, except for the question [“…your sleep was restless?”], for which we used a reverse scale. The presence of mental well-being was defined for respondents with an integrated score of 8 and above. The invented methodology was tested on European countries - the average discrepancy with the results obtained according to EQLS was 6.8 percentage points.

The indicator “Use of ICT” is calculated on the base of CMLC. Unlike ICT Survey 2010, which asks about Internet usage in the last 3 months with a frequency of at least once a week, CMLC calculates the share of respondents using the Internet more than once a week, but that does not change the results significantly.

Social connectedness was measured in strict correspondence with the original methodology of the AAI on the ESS data.

The educational attainment of older persons can be estimated by using the Russian Population Census (2010) or RLMS (2010) data. The results for elderly population are similar. However, at this stage of the research we prefer to use the Census data because of its better coverage of population.

Results and Discussion

The overall index equals 30.9 points, which means about 69 % of unused potential for active ageing of elderly people in Russia. This value gives Russia the 18th position out of 29 countries. Russia’s neighbours at the rating scale are Estonia, Spain, Croatia and Lithuania (Table 2). Russian AAI is higher for men (32.5 points) than for women (30.1 points). However, this difference is lower than the average gender gap for the EU. The comparison of the AAI’s gender gap in European countries and Russia is presented on Fig. 4.

Table 2 AAI and its domains for Russia and the EU (in points)

Fig. 4

The AAI’s gender gap between male and female (percentage points)

Employment

The first two domains that describe economic and social participation of older people have the highest impact on the overall AAI value. Each of them enters the final index with a weight of 35 %.

The value of the 1st domain for Russia is equal to 25.1 points, which corresponds to the 15th place among EU countries. The definition of the indicators of this domain is totally comparable with the definition used for the European AAI estimations. The main contribution to the 1st domain is provided by the level of employment of people aged 55–59. Considering the fact that CMLC underestimates the level of employment of older people, Russian position in this domain could be even higher.

The major reason of lower employment rates among Russians aged 55–64 is low retirement age (55 years old for women and 60 years old for men). Besides, poor health, which is correlated with education and social status, pushes less-educated people from manual employment into retirement (Levin 2015; Gora et al. 2010; Sinyavskaya 2005). Also it should be noted that given the small level of pension benefits many pensioners keep their employment involuntary to avoid poverty or a sharp reduction in living standard after retirement. Hence, employment is not necessarily related to a positive concept of active ageing.

Participation in Society

The total value of the 2nd domain for Russia equals 15.5 points for both sexes (13.5 points for men and 16.8 points for women), which places Russia in the 18th place of the total ranking. In other words, Russia is using the potential of the elderly to participate in public life by 64 % compared to the most successful European experience (Ireland) and by 48 % compared with a hypothetical “ideal state”, calculated of indicators’ maximum. As in the EU, in Russia caring for children and grandchildren makes the largest (60 %) contribution to the domain value. Participation in voluntary activities provides the smallest contribution (3.4 %). Women are more active in all spheres of the domain, and hence, they are at the 16th place in ranking for the domain, and men are only at the 22^sd.

In the methodological section we show that the empirical definitions of all indicators in this domain are different from empirical definitions used for the AAI calculation in EU countries. However, these differences are subtle and to our mind do not significantly change Russian positions.

According to the data used, only 2.1 % of Russians participate in voluntary activities, which is well below the EU-27 average and close to Romania and Poland. This may be associated with the lower prevalence of volunteer organizations in Russia and culturally stronger orientation on the family.¹⁰

By the provision of care to their own children or grandchildren, Russian seniors, with 37.2 % respondents involved in childcare at equivalent once a week, are in the first quarter of the ranking. The rate for women is unexpectedly only 2.4 percentage points higher than for men, which may be due to the rather low intensity of care required in the indicator.

The provision of care to older adults is rather low in Russia, 8.1 % according to GGS and 7.2 % according to CMLC, which might reflect the lower prevalence of very old relatives due to earlier mortality of Russian population. By this indicator Russia is at the end of the EU ranking. Women provide care for frail people twice more often than men (10.3 % vs. 4.8 %). The urban population shows results merely two times higher than the rural population, which can be related to the difference in life expectancy in cities and rural areas (for urban areas life expectancy at birth in 2013 was 71.3 years and for rural areas – 69.2¹¹).

Surprisingly, political activity of seniors is rather high in Russia (16.2 %). In the European context, the Russian figure is slightly beyond the EU average despite the fact that difference between empirical definitions of political activity in EQLS and ESS is not substantial. However, this result requires further examination, including estimation by alternative sources.

Independent, Healthy and Secure Life

The third domain index value in Russia is 60.7 points (the 26th place), including 64.4 points for men (the 27th place) and 58.9 points for women (the 26th place). It means that Russia leaves behind only Bulgaria, Romania and Latvia in the countries’ ranking.

We should also note here that among eight indicators of this domain only four are totally comparable with European AAI. Indicator of physical activity has substantially different definitions. However, the weight of the whole domain in the final index is only 10 %.

Russian seniors’ physical activity equals about one quarter of their European counterparts’ physical activity (4.0 % in Russia versus 15.6 % in the EU, on average). Men are more physically active than women; the elderly in cities are more physically active than in the countryside. At the same time, if gardening were included in the physical activity, the rate of physical activity would likely to increase and differences between urban and rural areas disappear.

The indicator contributing the most to the domain of independent, healthy and secure living (weight equals 20 %) is access to health and dental care, equal to 77.8 % for both sexes, 81.8 % and 75.7 % for men and women correspondingly. Russia is the fifth from the end in the countries’ ranking according to this indicator. This is not surprising given numerous problems in health care in Russia; and some other sources report even worse access to health care (Balabanova et al. 2012).

According to the indicator of the independent living (52.4 %) Russia is in the last place in the countries’ ranking. Comparing to the EU countries, Russia has a higher prevalence of multi-generational families, particularly among older women without a partner. Given differences in life expectancy and marital status among older men and women, the gender gap here is high: 60.0 % for men and 49.7 % for women in Russia versus 83.3 % (both men and women) in the EU-28. However, the interpretation of independent living of seniors as an indicator of their autonomy and, thus, an important factor of active ageing (the indicator enters the domain with a weight equals 20 %) is controversial. It has deep roots in European tradition of intergenerational relations. In Russia, on one hand, intergenerational relations are closer, and on the other hand, there is a significant shortage of housing, which prevents adult children from leaving their parents’ home. Consequently, living in multigenerational households does not necessarily mean a lack of autonomy and independence for seniors.

The indicators of financial security are slightly higher than the EU average values. The relative median income is 91.4 %, which is between Austria and Italy. According to the lack of poverty risk Russia (94.3 %) is close to Denmark, Ireland and Austria. The lack of material deprivation in Russia is higher than the EU average: 94.9 % and 90.1 % correspondingly. Overall, men have better financial security, but differences are insignificant. These results should not mislead. It’s true that Russian seniors do have the lowest risks of poverty compared to other social groups due to intensive pension indexation (Sinyavskaya 2012) but the overall standard of living in Russia is lower than in many of European countries, especially in Western and Northern Europe.

The individual indicator of physical safety is 60.7 % for Russia, which is lower the EU average (68.8 %). By this indicator Russia is close to Bulgaria (51.9 %) and Hungary (59.5 %). According to the AAI methodology 2013, the indicator of physical safety was higher for the majority of EU countries (the EU average is 79.0 %) and Russia (80.7 %).

The percentage of Russian seniors engaged in lifelong learning in Russia (1.4 %) is only one-third of the EU average, although the contribution of this indicator for the third domain is not significant (weight is 10 %). This indicator equals to 1.4 % for men and 1.5 % for women.

Capacity for Active Ageing

The value of the fourth domain, that enters the overall index with a weight of 20 %, is 53.3 points for both sexes (16th place in the ranking), which is around the EU average. The untapped potential is 27 % of the hypothetical ideal state, estimated of maximums, and 22 % of the most successful European practice. According to the capacity for active ageing, the potential of Russian men (52.0 points) is slightly lower than that of women (54.6 points), which is due to the lower male life expectancy and less frequent social contacts.

Four of six indicators of this domain have the same empirical definitions in Russian index as in European. Indicators of mental well-being (the indicator weight within the domain is 17 %) and use of ITC (weight is 7 %) are measured slightly differently.

In Russia the remaining life expectancy of both men and women at age 55 equals 21.2 years, which is the lowest value in Europe and corresponds to 42.4 % of the indicator of remaining life expectancy achievement of 50 years at age 55. The peculiarity of Russia is a pronounced gender discrepancy of this indicator, which, nevertheless, has no effect on its place in the rankings by gender. For men the indicator is 34.9 % (35.4 % of untapped potential compared with the best European practice), for women - 48.5 % (24.7 % of untapped potential).

Due to excessive early mortality of the Russian population, the share of healthy life years in the remaining life expectancy at age 55 is 79.1 % for both sexes, 78.0 % for women and 80.4 % for men. It exceeds the values of all EU countries, but should not be misinterpreted because it does not indicate Russia’s success in this dimension. If life expectancy in Russia were constantly growing, the share of healthy life expectancy would definitely decline.

According to the estimates, 56.7 % of the Russian population over 55 years meet the criteria of mental well-being, which is below the average level in the EU (64.6 %) and puts Russia slightly below the middle of the ranking. Men have better mental well-being (61.4 %) than women (54.8 %).

The value of the indicator of using of ICT is 7.0 % for both sexes, including 8.8 % for men and 5.9 % for women, which corresponds to end of the ranking.

Only 41.8 % of Russian seniors have active social contact, which is quite low compared with the EU. According to this indicator, Cyprus (38.2 %) and Latvia (38.3 %) have similar results. No significant gender difference is found in Russia (41.9 % for women versus 41.5 % for men).

According to the AAI approach, Russian seniors have an extremely high level of educational attainment (78.2 %), which is partly due to the upper age limit established in the indicator (younger cohorts of older people are better educated). Another possible explanation is a relatively easy access to secondary and higher education in soviet Russia. Compared to women (77.7 %) men (79 %) are better educated. Considering the entire population aged 55 years old or over, the gender difference becomes much more pronounced (74.5 % for men and 68.9 % for women), and the overall educational attainment declines.

Sensitivity of Results to Data Source

During our work on the adaptation of the AAI methodology to Russian data, we observe that the values of the indicators are significantly sensitive to the data sources used to estimate the AAI. In this section we give some examples of the possible variation of the results due to different question wording or alternative data sources. These evidences are important if the AAI is expanded to the countries outside EU.

First, we compare replies to the question about voluntary activities (2.1) based on EQLS-2012 (the European methodology) and ESS-2012 (the Russian methodology)¹² for 20 European countries (Table 3). Due to the fact that several European countries did not participate in ESS (2012) we excluded them from this analysis.

Table 3 The participation in voluntary activities of the elderly according to EQLS (2010) and ESS (2012)

As Table 6 shows the definition of voluntary activity used in ESS for Russia is wider since it includes any socially beneficial activities. Hence, we can assume similar or higher rates of voluntary activity participation according to the ESS data for some other countries. It is true for 11 countries out of 20, though. In 9 countries ESS gives lower rates of voluntary activities involvement than EQSL. Therefore, not only wording of questions is important for the comparability of results, but also the sample and the survey procedure.

Second, the AAI methodology of estimation of two indicators including physical activity (3.1) and physical safety (3.7) has been changed in 2014. Below we provide the comparison of the results according to two approaches.

Table 4 presents the values of the indicator of physical activity based on different sources: the Eurobarometer Survey (2010) and EQLS (2010). According to the Eurobarometer Survey the reply “5 times a week or more” has been considered as being physically active. The reply “Every day or almost every day” is applied in EQLS (2010). The difference in the physical activity participation varies from 0.1 percentage point for Lithuania to −7.7 points in Slovakia and 29.2 points in Finland. The average discrepancy equals 6.44 percentage points. In spite of the fact that two years passed between two surveys, and some of the dynamics can be related to this time change, it is important to underscore that change of the survey causes some shifts in the ranking of the countries by this single indicator.

Table 4 The rate of physical activity of the elderly according to the Eurobarometer Survey (2010) and EQLS (2010)

The ESS is used to measure the indicator of physical safety according to the old and revised AAI methodologies. Previously, physical safety was estimated by the answers to the question “How often, if at all, do you worry about becoming a victim of violent crime?” Since that question is no longer included in the ESS questionnaire, the indicator has been replaced by the following: “How safe do you – or – would you – feel walking alone in this area after dark?” We compared the variation in the assessment of physical safety following from the change of the question (Table 5). The difference between answers to these two question varies from −0.3 percentage points in Finland to 9.7 points in Spain and −43.6 points in Latvia. The changes in the countries’ ranking are more substantial than the changes in the ranking of physical activity, although we compare the data from same survey conducted in the same year. Hungary has moved from the 7th to the 20th place by this indicator, Latvia – from the 11th to the 23rd, Czech Republic – from the 4th to the 16th, Spain – from the 19th to the 9th and so on.

Table 5 The prevalence of physical safety among the elderly population according to ESS (2010)

Table 6 Individual indicators of Russian AAI

It is worth to note that the contribution of both indicators of physical activity and physical safety to the overall AAI value is rather small and therefore changes within these indicators will not substantially change countries’ positions in the overall AAI ranking. Nevertheless, analysis provided above clearly demonstrates that indicators values depend significantly on the data source and wording of the questions used to estimate the AAI. This fact should be taken into account when researchers replace data sources or questions to estimate the AAI in the dynamics or to extend its coverage to the countries outside the EU. In general researchers should focus on sustainability of data sources inside country to measure the progress of the active ageing situation, while international comparability is slightly less important and valuable.

Conclusion

The numerical exercise of applying the AAI methodology to Russian data presented in this paper shows that in the European context the overall situation with active ageing in Russia is not the worst. It is at the 18th position in the 28 + 1 AAI (2012) countries’ ranking. However, it means 30 % of unused potential for active ageing of the seniors compared to best European practice. The gender gap is even lower than on average in the EU.

The results indicate that the domain of capacity and enabling environment for active ageing provides the main contribution (more than 1/3) to the overall AAI. The gender differences are most evident in the 1st domain: 31.1 and 21.3 points for men and women correspondingly. Russia shows the worst results in the 3rd domain, where it has the 26th place in the country ranking.

In the whole, the comparison of the overall Russian AAI and its domains with the EU average and Sweden (the 1st place in the country rankings) allows us to conclude that there is unrealized potential in the first three domains in Russia. These results indicate that the Russian government should focus on (a) improving access to lifelong learning, including Internet, and sport facilities (b) increasing employability of seniors aged 55–64, (c) creating conditions for independent living by improving housing availability, (d) involving seniors in voluntary activities and supporting their involvement in social contacts and (e) improving access to health care and its quality. Increasing employment rates of elderly people aged 55–64 cannot be achieved without changes in the retirement age. According to the AAI methodology and the data used, Russia has a relatively good enabling environment for active ageing. Nevertheless, life expectancy growth, improvement of mental well-being and social connectedness are the main factors for the improvement of elderly well-being. The implementation of all the measures described above, raising the correspond indicators up to the EU average, would allow Russia to rise to the 9th place in the AAI country ranking. However, solutions on how to increase voluntary activity and social connectedness of Russian seniors are not so easy and require additional studies.

Our analysis shows good comparability of the results obtained for Russia on basis of existing data sources. Nevertheless, this research revealed several data problems. First, there is limited sociological and social statistical information on active ageing. There are no regular surveys focused on elderly population or on ageing. Existing data do not always meet the requirements of the AAI. Second, existing sources do not always provide comparable results with other countries. Russia does not participate in many international or European surveys; GGS has been terminated after three waves in 2011. Third, most of the existing surveys in Russia are cross-sectional. Only RLMS is (and GGS was) longitudinal; ESS is a repeated survey. It is unlikely that these or additional longitudinal or repeated surveys can be conducted given the current difficult economic conditions. Rosstat carries out some repeated surveys (LFS, household budget surveys) but only a few of them are published. CLMC is now a repeated survey but it has a 3 years interval between waves.

Our analysis of the robustness of the indicators to the data source and question wording shows that both are an important source of the variation of the results. Therefore, further, more sophisticated research on this issue is needed. We plan to compare the presented results with estimations based on other data sources. Women are now overrepresented compared to men in all age groups, starting from 1,4 ratio for age 55–59 up to 4,3 for 85+ because of the peculiarities of the mortality pattern. In the future an attempt to provide adjustments to correct the difference in average ages of men and women should be made, as it influences abilities for active participation in the society.

Also, this research reveals certain drawbacks in the estimation of the active ageing in relation to the Russian context. Certain indicators (voluntary activity participation, social connectedness, independent living) correspond to the Western European model of the ageing and intergenerational relations assuming relatively weak family relations, widespread nuclear families and external social activities as a source of personal life satisfaction. In Russia intergenerational relations and activities within families play more important role in elderly people life satisfaction. One of the possible approaches to take this dissimilarity into account is to assign different weights to the factors that have different importance in Russia comparing to European countries. Another example is the way how life expectancy and healthy life expectancy are taken into account in the index. The approach proposed in the AAI methodology works well for the countries with relatively high life expectancy. When applied to Russia, it leads to the overestimation of the enabling environment domain. Finally, to our mind new indicators can be included in the AAI to better capture situation with active ageing in countries like Russia. Examples include accessible public transportation and social care that are important for better inclusion of the older people in active life.

Appendix