Health Expectancy in Belgium
Reported, January 12, 2012
What is health expectancy?
Health expectancies were first developed to address whether or not longer life is being accompanied by an increase in the time lived in good health (the compression of morbidity scenario) or in bad health (expansion of morbidity). So health expectancies divide life expectancy into life spent in different states of health, from say good to bad health. In this way they add a dimension of quality to the quantity of life lived. How is the effect of longer life measured?
The general model of health transitions (WHO, 1984) shows the differences between life spent in different states: total survival, disability-free survival and survival without chronic disease. This leads naturally to life expectancy (the area under the ‘mortality’ curve), disability-free life expectancy (the area under the ‘disability’ curve) and life expectancy without chronic disease (the area under the ‘morbidity’ curve).
There are in fact as many health expectancies as concepts of health. The commonest health expectancies are those based on self-perceived health, activities of daily living and on chronic morbidity.
How do we compare health expectancies?
Health expectancies are independent of the size of populations and of their age structure and so they allow direct comparison of different population sub-groups: e.g. sexes, socioprofessional categories, as well as countries within Europe (Robine et al., 2003).
Health expectancies are most often calculated by the Sullivan method (Sullivan, 1971). However to make valid comparisons, the underlying health measure should be truly comparable.
To address this, the European Union has decided to include a small set of health expectancies among its European Community Health Indicators (ECHI) to provide synthetic measures of disability, chronic morbidity and perceived health.
Therefore the Minimum European Health Module (MEHM), composed of 3 general questions covering these dimensions,has been introduced into the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) to improve the comparability of health expectancies between countries.* In addition life expectancy without long term activity limitation, based on the disability question, was selected in 2004 to be one of the structural indicators for assessing the EU strategic goals (Lisbon strategy) under the name of Healthy Life Years (HLY).
? Belgian life expectancy (LE) at age 65 has increased by 1.2 years for women and 2.0 years for men over the 1996-2006 period: LE for both sexes between 1995-2001 was slightly below the EU15 average. By 2006 LE for both sexes was close to the EU25 average.
? Over the 1995-2001 period, health expectancy based on activity limitation (HLY) at age 65 from the ECHP data increased in Belgium. The proportion of HLY (or years without self-reported limitations due to health condition or disability), within the total expected years, slightly increased for both sexes between 1995 and 2001, being 65% for women and 70% for men in 2001.
Between 1995 and 2001 HLY in Belgium was above the EU15 average. The new HLY series, initiated in 2005 with the SILC data, shows values for Belgium in 2006 of around 1 year above the EU25 average. In 2006 women and men at age 65 could expect to spend 47% and 56% of their life without self-reported long-term
activity limitations respectively. Between 2005 and 2006 HLY slightly increased for men and women in Belgium
Credits: European Health Expectancy Monitoring Unit (EHEMU)
More information:
http://www.eurohex.eu/pdf/CountryReports_Issue2/Belgium.pdf
