Using microsimulation to reassess aging trends in Canada

Population aging is the population issue of the XXI century and many indices are used to measure its level and pace. In Science (2010), Sanderson and Scherbov suggested improvements to the measure of elderly dependency ratio. They identified several limitations to the use of chronological age as the main variable and proposed a new index, the Adult Disability Dependency Ratio, defined as the number of adults at least 20 years old with disabilities divided by the number of similarly aged adults without disabilities. They used the Sullivan prevalence-based method by multiplying derived disability rates to macro population projections. They showed results for several ECE and OECD countries; results for Canada (see online annex, available at https://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5997/1287/suppl/DC1) were derived using coefficients of Italy. However, disability is a complex multidimensional process (see Carrière, Keefe, Légaré, Lin, & Rowe, 2007; Légaré and Décarie, 2011), and microsimulation can take into account its implied complexity. Our results for Canada, presented here, exceed those in Science to show how more-sophisticated projections of disabled older adults can improve the analysis. We used LifePaths, a Statistics Canada's microsimulation model, to provide a perspective of the phenomena unobtainable with prevalence-based methods.