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Healthy life expectancy

What you should know about this indicator

Rationale

Substantial resources are devoted to reducing the incidence, duration and severity of major diseases that cause morbidity but not mortality and to reducing their impact on people’s lives. It is important to capture both fatal and non-fatal health outcomes in a summary measure of average levels of population health. Healthy life expectancy (HALE) at birth adds up expectation of life for different health states, adjusted for severity distribution making it sensitive to changes over time or differences between countries in the severity distribution of health states.

Definition

Average number of years that a person can expect to live in "full health" by taking into account years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury.

Method of estimation

The equivalent lost healthy year fractions required for the HALE calculation are estimated as the all-cause years lost due to disability (YLD) rate per capita, adjusted for independent comorbidity, by age, sex and country. Sullivan's method uses the equivalent lost healthy year fraction (adjusted for comorbidity) at each age in the current population (for a given year) to divide the hypothetical years of life lived by a period life table cohort at different ages into years of equivalent full health and equivalent lost healthy years . Predominant type of statistics: Predicted

Healthy life expectancy
Average number of years that a person can expect to live in "full health" by taking into account years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury.
Source
World Health Organization - Global Health Observatory (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
January 3, 2024
Next expected update
January 2025
Date range
2000–2019
Unit
Years

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The GHO data repository is WHO's gateway to health-related statistics for its 194 Member States. It provides access to over 1000 indicators on priority health topics including mortality and burden of diseases, the Millennium Development Goals (child nutrition, child health, maternal and reproductive health, immunization, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, neglected diseases, water and sanitation), non communicable diseases and risk factors, epidemic-prone diseases, health systems, environmental health, violence and injuries, equity among others.

Retrieved on
January 3, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.who.int/data/gho
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Health Organization. 2024. Global Health Observatory data repository. http://www.who.int/gho/en/. Accessed on 2024-01-03

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Healthy life expectancy”. Our World in Data (2024). Data adapted from World Health Organization. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthy-life-expectancy-at-birth [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

World Health Organization - Global Health Observatory (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

World Health Organization - Global Health Observatory (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Healthy life expectancy” [dataset]. World Health Organization, “Global Health Observatory” [original data]. Retrieved November 23, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthy-life-expectancy-at-birth