Growing life expectancy and a rising proportion of older people make the issue of whether cohorts are ageing better a key individual, social and economic issue. Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing we characterise how frailty develops with age, how this differs across demographic groups, whether more recent cohorts are ageing better and what the key areas of focus for health policy should be. We find cohort effects such that frailty at each age has been decreasing over time but that this trend shows modest signs of slowing and is less pronounced for those with lower wealth. Improvements across cohorts reflect improvements in ADLs, cognitive function, and mobility but limited progress in reducing the incidence of diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, etc. We find mobility and ADLs the main driver of average differences across regions but cross-regional differences are driven more by within than between group inequality.

预期寿命的延长和老年人口比例的上升使得群体老龄化是否更好成为关键的个人、社会和经济问题。利用英国老龄化纵向研究的数据，我们描述了衰弱如何随着年龄的增长而发展、不同人口群体之间的差异、最近的人群是否老化得更好以及卫生政策的重点关注领域应该是什么。我们发现队列效应使得每个年龄段的虚弱程度都随着时间的推移而减少，但这种趋势显示出适度放缓的迹象，并且对于财富较低的人来说不太明显。各队列的改善反映了 ADL、认知功能和活动能力的改善，但在降低癌症、心血管疾病等疾病发病率方面进展有限。