High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Life Expectancy and Healthy Life Expectancy
Life expectancy predicts the number of years that a person can expect to live on average, and is used to monitor population morbidity and mortality, and to measure health trends and inequalities within the population. Life expectancy at birth for Scots has improved over the long term, however a change in methodology has introduced a discontinuity in the series from 2009. The change in methodology allows Scottish HLE estimates to be compared with EU and UK estimates but prevents comparisons with the previous trend. A partial back series based on the new methodology has been calculated which shows that HLE under the new measure has been following a similar trend to the previous measure. In 2009, HLE for men was 60.0 years for men and 62.2 years for women.
For more information on the reasons for, and impact of, this change in methodology, refer to the technical paper on the ScotPHO website.
Healthy life expectancy (HLE) at birth is a quality of health measure, which combines life expectancy and self-assessed health from survey data. HLE has also increased over the long term but at a slower rate than for life expectancy. The gap between life expectancy and HLE is also greater for women than for men, suggesting that women spend more years in poor health.
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In deprived areas HLE is considerably lower than that for Scotland overall. In the most deprived 15% of areas in Scotland in 2007/08, HLE at birth was 57.5 years for males and 61.9 years for females. The Scottish Government has established a National Indicator to increase healthy life expectancy at birth in the most deprived areas.
The methodology change has not yet been applied to the estimates of HLE in deprived areas. This will be done when 2009-2010 estimates are published in December 2011. Until then, it should be noted that these estimates are not comparable with the national level estimates above.
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Source: NHS Information Services Division (ISD Scotland)
Method: abridged life tables (LE calculations based on Chiang (II) methodology; HLE based on the Sullivan method), using ;
a) GROS mid-year population estimates
b) GROS death registrations (using year of death, not registration)
c) self-assessed health (SAH) reported as good or fairly good, from the General Household Survey (GHS) (1980-1996, 1998) and the Scottish Household Survey (SHS) (1999-2002, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008).
Please note that these surveys are for ages 16+, and therefore the SAH for ages 16-19 is used for age groups 15-19, 10-14, 5-9, 3-4 and 0-2 (for GHS analyses); and 15-19, 10-14, 5-9, 1-4 and <1 (for SHS analyses).
Further Information