Well-being of older persons in Central and Eastern European countries
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Abstract
 Central and Eastern Europe is a unique region in terms of its social, economic and
demographic trends, particularly because of legacy of the communist system and
transformation to a market system. The transition coincided with a rapid
demographic change in which younger generation was able to reorganise themselves
relatively easily whereas older people found this change much more difficult. This
paper builds a picture of well-being of older population in eight Eastern European
countries: Albania, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey and
Ukraine and compares it to eight other European Union (EU) member States of the
same region. We used the Global AgeWatch Index – an analytical framework of
Zaidi (2013 ) offering comparative analysis of older people’s well-being across the
world. It is extended by gender-specific analysis for two domains: health status and
capability. The results show that the combined Index value of eight Eastern and
South-Eastern non-EU countries is considerably below the average observed for
eight EU member States, however, in some individual indicators, some of the non-
EU states performed better than the EU countries. The evidence summarised can be
used to assess the position of the region and points to areas where policy changes are
necessary.
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