Abstract de conférence
| Résumé : | Chronological age, or the number of years elapsed since birth, is one of the key structural determinants to one’s identity, perhapsonly second to gender. Subjective and chronological age rarely converge, and most people do not feel their age. While it is clearthere is a strong impact of diminished functional health on subjective age, there are few longitudinal studies that examine thisrelation. The aim of this study is to investigate, to what extent the gap between chronological and subjective age changes overtime, considering changes in both chronological age, functional health, and their interplay.This study analyses data from four waves of the English Longitudinal Study on Aging (ELSA). Using a random intercept mixedmodel, we examine the trajectories of the difference between chronological age and the subjective age of 12,000 respondentsand investigate how the onset of functional health problems influences this gap.Participants felt on average 10 years younger than their actual age, and the subjective age gap widens with increasing age untilabout 70 years of age. While having one health limitation increases one’s subjective age at age 50 with 3 years (and havingmultiple limitations with 5 years), the influence of health diminishes over age. At advanced ages high discrepancies betweenchronological and subjective age are common both in respondents with and without functional health limitations. |
