HelpAge International releases Global AgeWatch Index 2013

(Vatican Radio)The United Nations International Day of Older Persons has been celebrated on the 1st of October every year since 1991.

Today, UK-based charity HelpAge International launches its Global AgeWatch Index 2013, which measures the well-being of older people in 91 countries.

Giulia Cirillo spoke to Silvia Stefanoni, CEO of HelpAge International, about the aims of this index, and about the importance of today’s international celebrations.


Listen to the full interview:


“The celebration is extremely important. It’s an occasion for older people across the world to raise some of the issues and concerns they have, and for organisations like us to raise the awareness of the opinion-formers – governments and the United Nations and other organisations.

Our Global AgeWatch Index 2013 was compiled using available, globally comparable data produced by international organisations like the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, the International Labour Organisation, and the international education organisations.

There is one basic thing that we’re calling for, which is to ensure that these data are available across the world. The index shows that a lot of sub-Saharan Africa, Africa more generally, and the Middle East do not have these kind of data, which makes it very difficult for policy makers to develop responses. So one thing we’re calling for is to produce data on older people – and we are asking United Nations organisations and governments to do so, because it is totally unacceptable that today there are still many organisations of the United Nations and governments that only collect information up to the age of 49. So the data are not there, older people are invisible, and responses are not provided.

The overall message that comes out of the analysis at this stage is that there are countries, if you correlate their index against their GDP, that are doing better, and some less well. The other important thing that the index says is that history counts, which means that the countries that are doing best in terms of older people are those that put policies in place along the life course. So that’s why there are these two big messages, that money isn’t everything and that history counts.”