Grow old in good health – vast disparity between European countries.

Although life expectancy is constantly growing in the countries of the EU, living longer isn’t always the same as living well, and knowing to what age someone will live in good health remains a different question altogether. Carol Jagger, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Leicester, is part of the European Health Expectancy Monitoring Unit (EHEMU), who have undertaken a research project on healthy life expectancy within the EU. Using a new indicator called Healthy Life Years, they found that in 2005 life expectancy in the EU was 78 years on average for men and 83 for women, while men live on average without any health problems up to 67 years and women to 69 years. Great disparities persist, however, between the countries of the EU, and the differences in Healthy Life Years are much greater than differences in life expectancy. The lowest ‘years of healthy life’ is seen in Estonia, where the age is 59 years for men and 61 for women. In Denmark, by contrast, those values rise to 73 years for men and 74 years for women. The UK is higher than the European average with figures of 69 years and 9 months for men and 70 years and 9 months for women. Comment: Note the disparity is much more related to income than anything else, If we were not so hung upon race in the US we might well find that disparity is much more relates to income than anything else