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

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.