Assessing the Impact of Aging on Burden of Disease

BACKGROUND: In this study, we presented a theoretical model to measure aging rate in OECD countries, quantitatively measuring the effect of aging rate on disease patterns in each country and explaining how these effects were obtained. The purpose of this study was to investigate how disease burden varies according to the level of medical infrastructure and changes in aging index using OECD aging data and WHO disease burden data. METHODS: This study used OECD Health data and global burden of disease data from the WHO in 2000 and 2012. We applied a difference-in-differences (DID) model was used to analyze effects of aging. RESULTS: Disease burdens increased over time, especially in the aging population of middle-aged. In the case of loss of life due to premature death, the number of middle-aged and older population was increased significantly. When we examined the econometric model after controlling related factors, there was a significant increase in loss of life due to illness and premature death. On the other hand, the group of piles at the aging level had a significant positive effect on Years of Life Lost (YLL). Although the interaction effect as an important variable showing double difference effect of aging did not affect Disability adjusted Life Year (DALY), it showed a significant positive effect on YLL. CONCLUSION: Loss of life due to death of the elderly was relatively higher than that of the elderly. Therefore, the impact of population aging on medical resources and medical expenditures in the future should consider population structure changes, disease burden by age group, and interactions of these two incremental factors.