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The Healthy Life Years indicator (also called disability-free life expectancy) measures the number of remaining years that a person of a certain age is still supposed to live without disability. Healthy Life Years is a solid indicator to monitor health as a productivity/economic factor. Healthy Life Years introduces the concept of quality of life. It is used to distinguish between years of life free of any activity limitation and years experienced with at least one activity limitation. The emphasis is not exclusively on the length of life, as is the case for life expectancy, but also on the quality of life.
Healthy Life Years (HLY) is a functional health status measure that is increasingly used to complement the conventional life expectancy measures. The HLY measure was developed to reflect the fact that not all years of a person's life are typically lived in perfect health. Chronic disease, frailty, and disability tend to become more prevalent at older ages, so that a population with a higher life expectancy may not be healthier. Indeed, a major question with an aging population is whether increases in life expectancy will be associated with a greater or lesser proportion of the future population spending their years living with disability. If HLY is increasing more rapidly than life expectancy in a population, then not only is people living longer, they are also living a greater portion of their lives free of disability.
Any loss in health will, nonetheless, have important second order effects. These will include an altered pattern of resource allocation within the health-care system, as well as wider ranging effects on consumption and production throughout the economy. It is important for policy-makers to be aware of the opportunity cost (i.e. the benefits forgone) of doing too little to prevent ill-health, resulting in the use of limited health resources for the diagnosis, treatment, and management of preventable illness and injuries.
How is the Healthy Life Years indicator calculated ?
The indicator is calculated following the Sullivan method which is widely used by experts across the world since the 1970's. It is based on prevalence measures of the age specific proportion of population with and without disabilities and on mortality data.
Data on the Healthy Life Years in the European Union
A Healthy Life Years improvement must be the main health goal for the EU. At present HLY at birth in the former EU-15 was, on average, 12 years shorter than overall life expectancy in men and 17 years shorter in women.
The Healthy Life Years and the allocation of resources
HLY has been proposed as an appropriate indicator for the short-term allocation of social and health resources.
European Commission - Health & Consumer Protection Directorate-General (DG SANCO) developments on the EU structural indicators
The “Healthy Life Years” indicator is now in the core set of the European Structural Indicators. This follows the Resolutions of the Lisbon European Council (20 to 23 March 2000).
Are we living longer, healthier lives in the EU? (First reports of the EHEMU Project)
In 2004 Health & Consumer Protection Directorate-General decided to support a project, in the framework of the Public Health Programme, the European Health Expectancy Monitoring Unit (EHEMU) Project. .
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