The Healthy Life Years (HLY) as a percentage of life expectancy is an important indicator about the quality of life. It makes it possible to assess whether an increase in life expectancy is accompanied by an increase in the number of years lived in good health.
The Healthy Life Years indicator measures the number of remaining years that a person of a specific age is still expected to live in a healthy condition. In the case of the Eurostat HLY, a healthy condition is defined by the absence of limitations in functioning/disability.
HLY is calculated using  Sullivan's method which combines information on mortality and morbidity. Information on mortality is taken from life tables. Information on morbidity is based on prevalence measures, i.e. the age specific proportion of the population in healthy and unhealthy conditions.
The following question, taken from the annual European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey (EU-SILC), has been used for obtaining data on the prevalence of morbidiy for the year 2004 and onwards for EU-15 old Member States and from 2005 onwards for EU-10 new Member States:
For at least the last six months, to what extent have you been limited because of a health problem in activities people usually do? Would you say you have been:
- severely limited;
- limited but not severely;
- not limited.
Only the third category (i.e. not limited) is used to calculate HLY. Due to some differences in the question used in the Danish SILC, data for Denmark should be interpreted with caution. | Trend data for the years 1995-2001 for EU-15 Member States (excl. Luxembourg) were obtained from the ECHP (European Community Household Panel). For trends see: Figures, underlying data and maps.
For more information on HLY see:
EHEMU (European Health Expectancy Monitoring Unit)
Also see:
Eurostat Metadata Healthy Life Years Expectancy: Summary Methodology
Eurostat Metadata Income and Living Conditions: Base Page
Healthy Life Years in the core of the Lisbon Strategy (by DG SANCO)
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Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom
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The ECHP was carried out during the period 1994-2001 (Eurostat). The ECHP is a longitudinal, multi-subject survey covering many aspects of daily life, particularly employment and income, but also demographic characteristics, environment, education and health. The ECHP is a unique source of information due to its three main characteristics. These are (1) its multidimensional coverage of a range of topics simultaneously, (2) a standardised methodology and procedures yielding comparable information across countries and (3) a longitudinal or panel design. This longitudinal design makes it possible to follow up and interview the same private households and persons over several consecutive years. In all, the sample covers some 60 000 households comprising 130 000 adults aged 16 or over at 31 December of the previous year. The first wave took place in 1994, when the EU had only 12 Member States, so Austria, Finland and Sweden were not included.
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