Healthy Life Years

The Healthy Life Years indicator (HLY) is a European structural indicator computed by Eurostat. It is one of the summary measures of population health, known as health expectancies, composite measures of health that combine mortality and morbidity data to represent overall population health on a single indicator. HLY measures the number of remaining years that a person of a certain age is expected to live without disability. It is actually a disability-free life expectancy.

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 Eurostat EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey (EU-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 to be examined every year, during the European Spring Council for assessing the EU strategic goals (Lisbon Strategy) under the name of “Healthy Life Years” (HLY). Furthermore the European Union is co-funding a Joint Action on Chronic Diseases and Promoting Healthy Ageing across the Life Cycle (CHRODIS-JA). This aims to promote and facilitate a process of exchange and transfer of good practices between European countries and regions, addressing chronic conditions, with a specific focus on health promotion and prevention of chronic conditions, multi-morbidity and diabetes.

Detailed information on the Health Expectancies in Europe are available from the EurOhex Advanced research on European health expectancies while latest Healthy Life Years values can be found on the general public website devoted to the Healthy Life Years.

Dramatic increases in life expectancy in the most developed countries - and therefore in the countries of the European Union - constitute one of the most remarkable advances of the last decades. But why prolong life if this is to be accompanied by increases in severe mental and physical impairment? Thus a further challenge confronts the European Community:

In this context, the classical mortality indicators are no longer sufficient to monitor the health status of European populations. The availability of health expectancy indicators dividing life expectancy into life spent in different states of health is useful to health authorities in the field of public health and health policies provided that these indicators allow comparisons over time and between geographic areas and between socio-economic groups in society. As the post-war generation reaches retirement, the pace of ageing will increase dramatically in our European societies, with profound social effects. HLY is an important indicator :

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