Healthy life years in the Czech Republic :different data sources, different figures

Abstract

Healthy Life Years (HLY) may be an important indicator of the potential demand for health and long-term care services, especially for the elder generations of the population. This indicator, unlike the concept of life expectancy, puts emphasis not only on the whole length of life but also on its quality, expressed as the period of life in good health. The European Union’s Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) could be used as the basic set of indicators for an overall assessment of the state of health. In this article, we compare data on the prevalence of activity limitation in both surveys. The questions used to assess this and their wording are almost the same in both surveys. However, significant differences can be observed in the results of the two surveys. The most important explanation of the difference is probably the overall context of the survey. The EU-SILC is an extensive survey focusing on living conditions and health issues are marginal. The EHIS survey focuses exclusively on health, and there are a number of questions that further inquire about the respondent’s health, specific chronic illnesses, visits to the doctor, etc. The second part of the article investigates how these differences in the prevalence of activity limitation are reflected in the HLY indicator.