Age identity: A cross-cultural global approach

A combination of recent international surveys establishes surprising universality of the subjective and ideal age self-construal constructs appraised in years. Results showed that in 18 culturally disparate countries, age-of-birth was older than subjective/cognitive age self-construal; in 15 nations ideal/desired ages were measured as well, and those were even younger. Implications of the construct's universality, as well as the reliability, validity, and equivalence of the different measurements of age identity in a cross-cultural research context, are discussed from a global perspective.