Assessing wellbeing and deprivation in later life in Brazil and South Africa

The paper develops and applies a multidimensional counting approach to rank order wellbeing and deprivation distributions among a panel of older people in Brazil and South Africa. Using data collected in 2002 and 2008 among low-income households in urban and rural locations in Brazil and South Africa, the analysis in the paper throws light upon (i) changes in multidimensional deprivation associated with individual ageing and (ii) the effects of differential access to pension provision on wellbeing and deprivation. The paper finds that individual ageing is not necessarily associated with a decline in multidimensional wellbeing. The findings also lend support to the view that social policy, and especially inclusive pension provision, has an important role in addressing the effects of rapid population ageing in developing countries.