The Health Status of a Population: Health State and Survival Curves, and HALE Estimates

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new health measure derived from survival curves that is independent of standard deviation, allowing for country comparisons and insights into health status and life expectancy.

Contribution

It proposes a novel health status measure based on the area under the health state curve, independent of standard deviation, and compares it with existing measures like HALE.

Findings

The health status measure aligns closely with life expectancy estimates.

It enables classification and ranking of countries based on health status.

The measure is robust and independent of the standard deviation parameter.

Abstract

In this paper we explore the very important case of finding a health measure in the lines of the survival curve but independent of the standard deviation parameter. This is done by estimating the health state curve and calculating the total area under the curve. An interesting comparison with the survival curves is done. The health status measure (HSM or HS) resulting is of the form of the life expectancy (LE) as it is expressed in terms of years of age. The HS is independent of the standard deviation. When a perfect rectangularization of the survival curve appear, the LE is equal to the age where the health state curve approaches zero. The provided HS form gives rise to an interesting classification of various countries. The results are close to those obtained by the LE estimator with an interesting reorganization of country ranking. We also provide illustrations of our estimated Health Status along with comparative presentations of the Healthy Life Expectancy and the HALE measures in several countries. Theoretical issues are provided and important stochastic simulations are done along with reproduction of the death probability density forms.