New Approaches to Measurement and Analysis of Population Aging in Twenty-First Century Brazil

New ways of conceptualizing age and measuring aging have been proposed by Scherbov and Sanderson (2016) for developed countries. This article aims to measure and analyze the aging of the Brazilian population by combining traditional measures with these new approaches. Indicators were calculated based on the concepts of chronological age, prospective age, and relative age. In the application of the prospective approach , data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) for Brazil and its five regions (1980–2060) were used; while in the characteristics approach , data from the Longitudinal Study on the Health of the Brazilian Elderly for the year 2015 were used. The results based on the prospective approach indicate an aging at a slower pace than the one projected by traditional measures. In addition, it is verified that some regions of the country are in a more advanced process of population aging. In the case of the characteristics approach , the results support that the populations of the North and Northeast regions have a more accelerated aging process than the national average.