Inequality of healthy life expectancy for the Chinese elderly and its trend

Kaishan Jiao

doi:10.1186/s40711-019-0111-3

Abstract

In this study, we use long-term follow-up survey data to explore the inequality of the healthy life expectancy among the elderly and the trends of such expectancy among different birth cohorts and at different ages. The results show that older people with higher socioeconomic status do not have a significant advantage in healthy life expectancy. Its advantage in life expectancy is mainly due to the relatively low mortality rate under conditions of disability, i.e., the relatively long life expectancy with disability. This also shows that the elderly with higher socioeconomic status is at the stage of disability expansion. In addition, the study examines the age effect and cohort effect of health inequality and points out that health inequalities among different socioeconomic status groups are likely to increase in the future.

Highlights

Along with the transition of the human disease spectrum from acute and infectious diseases with high mortality to chronic diseases with low mortality (Fries 1983) has come the drastic increasing of life expectancies worldwide and the critical issue of whether increased life spans are “healthy” life spans or not—in other words, whether the increasing of life expectancies indicates the improvement of the overall health of populations or not
In response to the accelerated population aging in China over the three decades and the consequent burden on social health services, this paper focuses on the healthy life expectancy of the elderly in China and explores healthy life expectancy inequality among social groups with different socioeconomic statuses
With a multi-state model and data derived from a national 13-year longitudinal survey, this paper tries to explore the transition between health conditions of the Chinese elderly and, based on this exploration, discover inequalities in the life expectancy and the healthy life expectancy among elderly with different socioeconomic statuses

Summary

Introduction

Along with the transition of the human disease spectrum from acute and infectious diseases with high mortality to chronic diseases with low mortality (Fries 1983) has come the drastic increasing of life expectancies worldwide and the critical issue of whether increased life spans are “healthy” life spans or not—in other words, whether the increasing of life expectancies indicates the improvement of the overall health of populations or not. Compared with the life expectancy index, the healthy life expectancy captures the mortality rate, and takes into account health conditions at certain ages, which is a powerful (2019) 6:22 tool to reflect the state of health of entire populations in one country or region and to evaluate health services and economic cost. While reflecting the health condition of entire populations in a country or region, the healthy life expectancy is an index on the distribution of health and the differences in the health among social groups of different socioeconomic statuses. Given that the mortality inequality among different social groups may be distinct from the health inequality among them, the healthy life expectancy has an obvious advantage when measuring the health inequality in one country or region, for it can help to combine and compare mortality and health inequality. In response to the accelerated population aging in China over the three decades and the consequent burden on social health services, this paper focuses on the healthy life expectancy of the elderly in China and explores healthy life expectancy inequality among social groups with different socioeconomic statuses

Methods

Results

Conclusion