Dr Collin Payne leads the team for this project with funding provided by the ANU Futures Scheme

The current evidence base on ageing populations in low- and middle-income (LMI) countries has largely focused on measuring cross-sectional differences between populations. These sorts of analyses produce associative observations that are blind to the dynamic pathways connecting social, biological, developmental, and policy determinants of health. A lack of in-depth understanding of these relationships has substantially hindered the development of effective policies and health-care practices affecting older adults in LMI contexts.

Dr Payne’s ANU Futures Scheme project will focus on developing a new evidence-base on ageing in LMICs by utilising emerging nationally-representative longitudinal data sources from LMI countries. The primary aims of the project are to threefold:

1. Gain insights into the current trajectories of health and well-being among older adults in developing contexts, with particular focus on the role of socioeconomic status in shaping these trends. This effort will focus both on the predictors of late-life health events, and on the consequences of poor health for individuals’ functioning and daily lives.
2. Identify countries, contexts, and populations that are succeeding in healthy aging to determine best practices for improving health among older adults in LMI contexts, and in order to developing and streamline national health-care strategies in cost-effective ways.
3. Develop and extend analytical methods for causal demographic modeling in order to explore the role of health behaviors and health policy changes in shaping healthy aging in LMI contexts.

This project currently offers an ANU Futures of Demography PhD Scholarship.