Grow old in good health – vast disparity between European countries

Carol Jagger, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Leicester, is part of the European Health Expectancy Monitoring Unit (EHEMU), who have undertaken a research project on healthy life expectancy within the EU.

Using a new indicator called Healthy Life Years, they found that in 2005 life expectancy in the EU was 78 years on average for men and 83 for women, while men live on average without any health problems up to 67 years and women to 69 years.

Great disparities persist, however, between the countries of the EU, and the differences in Healthy Life Years are much greater than differences in life expectancy.

The lowest ‘years of healthy life’ is seen in Estonia, where the age is 59 years for men and 61 for women. In Denmark, by contrast, those values rise to 73 years for men and 74 years for women. The UK is higher than the European average with figures of 69 years and 9 months for men and 70 years and 9 months for women.

These results are correlated with the overall wealth of the different countries as measured by GDP and the average level of health spending by the countries on older people. In general, a strong GDP and higher health spending are associated with more Healthy Life Years at age 50.

For men, long periods out of work (over 12 months) and poorer education were equally responsible for fewer Healthy Life Years.

The disparities observed are even stronger among the last ten countries to have joined the EU. For most of these countries, the age of retirement is higher than or coincides with the average age at which people can hope to live without health problems.

Carol Jagger commented: “Without an improvement in the state of health of older people, it will be difficult to raise the retirement age or bring more older workers into the workforce for certain EU countries.”

Partner institutions in the research project are: the University of Leicester; the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED); The Scientific Institute of Public Health, Belgium; the Erasmus Medical Center, University Medical Center Rotterdam, Netherlands; and the French Institute of Health and Medical Research, (Inserm)

Media Contact

Ather Mirza alfa

More Information:

http://www.le.ac.uk

All latest news from the category: Social Sciences

This area deals with the latest developments in the field of empirical and theoretical research as it relates to the structure and function of institutes and systems, their social interdependence and how such systems interact with individual behavior processes.

innovations-report offers informative reports and articles related to the social sciences field including demographic developments, family and career issues, geriatric research, conflict research, generational studies and criminology research.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors