Health Expectancy: Increasingly Used, but Not Well Understood

Good health is central to human happiness and well-being. It contributes substantially to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer and are more productive. The corresponding public health policies are typically assessed based on a structural indicator for “Health Expectancy” (HE) such a...

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Vydáno v:Comparative population studies Ročník 50; s. 239 - 264
Hlavní autoři: Luy, Marc, Di Giulio, Paola, Di Lego, Vanessa, Lazarevič, Patrick, Muszyńska-Spielauer, Magdalena, Sauerberg, Markus
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:angličtina
Vydáno: Wiesbaden Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) 01.01.2025
Federal Institute for Population Research
Témata:
Compression of morbidity
Expansion of morbidity
GALI
Happiness
Health care
Health expectancy
Health services
Health-adjusted life expectancy
Healthy life years
Life expectancy
Policy making
Population health
Public Health
Trends
Well being
ISSN:1869-8980, 1869-8999, 1869-8999
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Shrnutí:Good health is central to human happiness and well-being. It contributes substantially to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer and are more productive. The corresponding public health policies are typically assessed based on a structural indicator for “Health Expectancy” (HE) such as the EU’s “Healthy Life Years” (HLY) or the WHO’s “Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy” (HALE). Unfortunately, HE estimates are extremely sensitive to methodological choices, an issue that is widely overlooked. First, the common practice of measuring population health by the distribution of responses to specific survey questions is ambiguous and not straightforward. Consequently, levels and trends of HE vary significantly depending on the underlying data and health indicators. Moreover, HE estimates are also highly sensitive to technical features, such as the age range and partitioning selected for analysis, as well as the technique chosen to add the health dimension to the life table; an issue that has gone remarkably unrecognized. With the aim of filling this important research gap, the European Research Council (ERC) funded a Consolidator Grant project entitled “Levels and trends of health expectancy: understanding its measurement and estimation sensitivity” (LETHE). This special issue of Comparative Population Studies (CPoS) marks the completion of this project. It contains five articles, each dealing with a specific aspect of HE computation or a concrete empirical application based on HE indicators. This editorial summarizes the insights gained during the LETHE project and aims to make users of HE aware of its methodological sensitivities through illustrative empirical examples. A better understanding of these issues is essential to ensure the indicators’ appropriate usage in research as well as in advising policy makers and public health officials. * This is the Editorial on the Special Issue "Levels and Trends of Health Expectancy: Understanding its Measurement and Estimation Sensitivity".
Bibliografie:SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
content type line 14
ObjectType-Editorial-2
ObjectType-Commentary-1
ISSN:1869-8980
1869-8999
1869-8999
DOI:10.12765/CPoS-2025-14