CSO: healthy life expectancy increased

Extending healthy life expectancy is one of the main goals of many countries' health policies. If healthy life expectancy is increasing faster than average life expectancy, it means that people are in good health for an increasing proportion of their lives. Healthy Life Years (HLY), also known as the Disability Free Life Expectancy (DFLE) Index, is an indicator depicting the health situation of the population, calculated on the basis of life expectancy tables and individually and subjectively perceived disability. The HLYX value is interpreted as the expected average number of years a person of x completed years has to live without disability, provided that current conditions of mortality and population health loss do not change by the end of that person's life.

As the CSO indicates, the gender gap in healthy life expectancy at birth (HLY0) in 2022 was 3.6 years in favor of women. This value decreases with years lived. For those aged 50, it was 2.1 years, and for those aged 65 it was just one year. In comparison, the difference in life expectancy at birth (e0) in the same year was 7.7 years.

In Poland, there is a wide variation in the healthy life expectancy rate by province. In 2022, the spread between the extreme values of this indicator for men was 3.1 years. The longest healthy life expectancy for men was characterized by the provinces of Wielkopolskie (62.1 years), Zachodniopomorskie (61.6 years) and Lubuskie (61.4 years), while the shortest was in Lubelskie (59 years), Łódzkie (59.1 years), Śląskie and Świętokrzyskie (59.5 years each). Among women, the variation is at a similar level at 3.2 years.

When the data recorded in 2022 is compared with that of 2012, it shows that healthy life expectancy, for both men and women, has increased by 1.6 years.

Elaborated. on the basis of: Central Statistical Office