Abstract: The magnitude and trend of the disabled elderly population are important basis for evaluating demands of the elderly for long-term care services and planning development of social service system in an aging society. However, domestic existing data and research have not reached consensus on this issue. Using functions status information of the elderly in multiple surveys, this study examines the criteria of disability status in these surveys, and compares the disability rates reported from those surveys, with an attempt to obtain a reasonable estimation of the disability rate of the elderly in China. The analysis of data of three special surveys on ageing shows that KATZ Scale is an comparable tool usually adopted for the measurement of function status in those surveys, and the disability rate of Chinese elderly is between 10.48% and 13.31%. In order to facilitate further study on trends and patterns of disability of the elderly，this paper suggests that a consistent measurement in disability of the elderly for data collection be adopted, the sample size of the oldest-old people be expanded, and the representativeness of samples for different regions be improved in future research surveys.

Keywords: Disability Rate, Special Surveys on Ageing, Measurement Method, Katz Scale

摘要： 失能老年人的规模和发展趋势是把握老年人口的照料服务需求、规划未来社会养老服务发展的重要依据。然而在这一问题上，国内已有的数据和研究并未达成一致。文章从失能状态的评判标准着手、对各项调查中获得的对失能老年人规模和比例的统计结果进行比较分析，以期获得对中国老年人失能规模和失能率的合理推断。对3项老年专项调查数据的分析结果显示，专项调查普遍采用操作性较强的KATZ量表对老年人的功能状态进行评估，据此方法得到中国城乡老年人的失能率在10.48%~13.31%之间。为进一步确定老年人口失能水平及变化规律，笔者建议在未来相关调查研究中，统一测量方法，并增大样本规模特别是高龄老年人的数量，提高样本区域分布的代表性。

关键词: 失能率, 老年专项调查, 测量方法, KATZ量表