Health Empirics

The discourse on Population Ageing is mostly premised on the rising share of older adults in the population that overlooks the heterogeneous pace of attaining this age by different population sub-groups. The exceptionality of surviving to older ages affects the distribution of the population subgroups over the life course, leading to an ‘unequal ageing experience’. To address this knowledge gap, this study considers ageing as a survival experience at the individual and the population level and tries to exposit the volume of unequalness in the ageing experience and its significance while reading the speed of population ageing. Using NFHS-5 (2019–21) data, we employ period life table techniques to examine socioeconomic gradients in survival to age 60, using adult survival probabilities and temporary life expectancy as outcome measures. Among adults, 59.3% of deaths in the richest quintile occurred above the median age, compared to 40.6% in the poorest. Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes had 4.4% and 3.3% lower survival to older ages than the national average, while Higher Castes and the Richest Quintile had 3.0% and 6.4% higher survival, respectively. Only 72.2% of the poorest reached older ages, compared to 86.2% of the richest. The study illustrates the need to accommodate this heterogeneity in survival experience in the assessment of population ageing, given the differential survival experience of population subgroups to make attaining older ages not a privilege for a few.