Economic well-being of the elderly: Theory and measurement

A conceptual framework of well-being based on economic theory is reviewed to provide the structure necessary to determine minimum data requirements for evaluating the economic status of the elderly in developing countries. This framework is applied to the income and consumption of older persons to indicate the types of data needed to measure the well-being of older families. The information obtained by two recent surveys of Asian countries is examined and found to be insufficient to derive a comprehensive measure of well-being. Suggestions are made for specific data that future surveys should gather to enable analysts to measure the real and relative well-being of older households in the Asian and Pacific countries.