Incidence-based Estimates of Healthy Life Expectancy for the United Kingdom: Coherence between Transition Probabilities and Aggregate Life Tables

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to estimate healthy life expectancy in the UK by adjusting transition matrices to be consistent with aggregate mortality data, providing coherent health expectancy measures.

Contribution

It introduces a statistically coherent approach to derive healthy and unhealthy life expectancy estimates aligned with population mortality data.

Findings

Method successfully applied to UK data

Provides consistent estimates of healthy life expectancy

Enhances understanding of aging population health trends

Abstract

Will the United Kingdom's ageing population be fit and independent, or suffer from greater chronic ill health? Healthy life expectancy is commonly used to assess this: it is an estimate of how many years are lived in good health over the lifespan. This paper examines a means of generating estimates of healthy and unhealthy life expectancy consistent with exogenous population mortality data. The method takes population transition matrices and adjusts these in a statistically coherent way so as to render them consistent with aggregate life tables. It is applied to estimates of healthy life expectancy for the United Kingdom.