Title: Active Aging Index in Bangladesh: A Comparative Analysis with a European Approach.

The Active Aging Index (AAI) is a tool for detecting and tracking active aging in the older population. The proportion of the aging population is growing very fast, from 6.4% in 2020 to around 20.0% in 2041, in Bangladesh. But the country does not have a calculated AAI to know its active aging situation or to make a global comparison. Objective: The objective of the study was to calculate and compare AAI for Bangladesh with a European AAI approach. Method: Secondary analysis was conducted based on the data from Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), General Economic Division, Ministry of Planning, Department of Population Sciences, and the United Nations (UN) study to calculate the individual indicators of the four domains of AAI. Results: For Bangladesh, 15 out of 22 indicators of AAI were available from the analysis. The result of the study shows that the AAI value for Bangladesh is 30.1. Among the four domains of the AAI, the 'capacity and enabling environment' domain scored the best (59.9) and the participation domain scored the second highest (40.3). The score of the 'independent, healthy and secure living' domain was poor (28.2) and the score in the employment domain was very poor (3.3). Conclusion: Policy-makers should pay special attention immediately to improve each of the individual indicators of AAI for better active aging of the seniors. At the same time, policy-makers should focus on the immediate initiative for the generation of data for the missing 7 indicators for AAI. The study findings would be a basic reference case for Bangladesh to know the situation of active aging and what to do for the betterment of the upcoming huge number of seniors of the country and also possible to compare with other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]