Determining Health Expectancies

Health expectancies were developed to address the important question of whether or not we are exchanging longer life for poorer health - replacing quality by quantity.

As an indicator of population health, helath expectancy allows us to address the important question of whether or not we are exchanging longer life for poorer health - extending the quantity of life at the expense of quality. This book explains how to define and measure health and morbidity and how to combine these measurements with mortality to produce comparable health expectancies in order to address this key question. Sections include:

• the concepts behind health expectancy and how they have evolved,
• methods of calculating health expectancies,
• comparisons of the health of the world's countries at different stages of demographic transition and
• the relevance of health expectancies to health policy.

Determining Health Expectancies is built on ten years of work of REVES (Reseau Esperance de Vie en Sante/ Network on Health Expectancy). Researchers, clinicians, demographers and health planners will find it a well referenced coherent text for developing and evaluating methods of calculation and furthering the use of health expectancy as a tool of health planning.

Health expectancies were developed to address the important question of whether or not we are exchanging longer life for poorer health - replacing quality by quantity.
Health expectancies extend the concept of life expectancy to morbidity and disability by providing a means of dividing life expectancy into life spent in various states of good and bad health. Being independent of the size of populations and of their age structure, health expectancies thus allow direct comparison of the different groups that constitute populations: sexes, socio-professional categories, regions.

This book brings together for the first time, the major works of REVES* over the past ten years. As well as providing comparisons of the health of many of the world's countries, the book includes sections on the concepts behind health expectancies and the demographic transition, the relevance of health expectancies to health policy and the different methods of calculating health expectancies.

*REVES is an international organisation of researchers, clinicians and health planners addressing these issues as well as developing and recommending methods of calculation and furthering the use of health expectancy as a tool for health planning.
* State-of-the-art coverage of this important health indicator
* Heavily cross referenced to give the book structure and coherence
* Editors are pioneers in the field of health expectancy