Determining Health Expectancies (PDF)

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