Direct Healthy Life Expectancy Estimates from Life Tables with a Sullivan Extension. Bridging the Gap Between HALE and Eurostat Estimates

Abstract

The analytic derivation of a more general model of survival-mortality and the estimation of a parameter bx related to the Healthy Life Years Lost (HLYL) is followed by the formulation of a computer program providing results similar to those of the World Health Organization for the Healthy Life Expectancy (HALE) and the corresponding HLYL estimates. This program is an extension of classical life table including more columns to estimate the cumulative mortality, the average mortality, the person life years lost, and finally the HLYL parameter bx. Even more, a further extension of the Excel program based on the Sullivan method provides estimates of the Healthy Life Expectancy at every year of the lifespan for five different types of estimates that are the Direct, WHO, Eurostat, Equal and Other. Estimates for several countries are presented. A methodology and a program to bridge the gap between the World Health Organization (HALE) and Eurostat (HLE) healthy life expectancy estimates, is also presented. The latest version of this program (SKI-6 Program) appears in the Demographics2020 website at http://www.smtda.net/demographics2020.html.