Conceptualising contextual variation in older adults’ quality of life cross-nationally: challenges and opportunities

Demographically, the world has experienced a (likely) irreversible transition, wherein for the first time in human history, older adults will outnumber children. Although individual-level characteristics are crucial to understanding quality of life (QOL) and ageing cross-nationally, scholars are increasingly taking advantage of an explosion of country-level data to explore contextual variation. A majority of prior and existing work includes comparisons by continent, regions within continents, across countries, within a single country, or within a metropolitan area. However, current methods rely heavily on predetermined administrative boundaries, which cannot capture empirical contextual variation that exists along lines of geography, culture, economics and policy. This chapter argues for a methodological operationalisation of within-country ‘context’ that draws on publicly available data about geography, culture, policy and economics to create standardised within-country regional identifiers. Standardised within-country identifiers would allow researchers to link individual- and country-level data to strengthen scholarly understanding of within-country contextual variation in ageing and QOL.