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Healthy life years at birth

Healthy life years at birth. By sex 2022
Catalonia Spain European Union-27
Men 68.7 61.7 62.4 (b) Break in time series
Women 69.7 60.6 62.8 (b) Break in time series
Total 69.1 61.2 62.6 (b) Break in time series
Units: Years.
Source Catalonia: Ministry of Health. Source Spain and European Union: Eurostat.
(b) Break in time series.
Indicador ODS Indicator 03.11 from the EU Sustainable Development Goals

Last update: October 8, 2024.

CMORT

These statistics have a specific section with all the information available: Statistics on Cause of Death (CMORT).

Methodological note

The indicator of healthy life years (HLY) measures the number of remaining years that a person of specific age is expected to live without any severe or moderate health problems.

The notion of health problem for Eurostat's HLY is reflecting a disability dimension and is based on a self-perceived question which aims to measure the extent of any limitations, for at least six months, because of a health problem that may have affected respondents as regards activities they usually do (the so-called GALI - Global Activity Limitation Instrument foreseen in the annual EU-SILC survey). The indicator is therefore also called disability-free life expectancy (DFLE). So, HLY is a composite indicator that combines mortality data with health status data. HLY also monitor health as a productive or economic factor.

An increase in healthy life years is one of the main goals for European health policy. And it would not only improve the situation of individuals but also result in lower levels of public health care expenditure. If healthy life years are increasing more rapidly than life expectancy, it means that people are living more years in better health.

The data used to calculate this indicator for Catalonia are sourced from information on self-perceived health from the Catalan Health Survey (ESCA) and from the abridged life table of the Catalan Mortality Register.

The data for Spain and Eurostat have been calculated using mortality and EU-SILC data. Note that in March 2012, these data were revised (recalculating the 2004-2010 series): instead of using the age of the income period (as traditionally done for many income and living indicators), the age at interview for the GALI prevalences was used. However, the change only resulted in minimal differences from the previously calculated outcomes and trends.