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Health Expectancy

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Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging
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Synonyms

Active life expectancy; Disability-free life expectancy; Disease-free life expectancy; Happy life expectancy; Health life expectancy; Health status index; Healthspan; Healthy life expectancy; Healthy life years; Psychological wellbeing life expectancy; Successful aging life expectancy

Definition

As a general indicator of population health, health life expectancy, or more commonly health expectancy (HE), refers to the average number of years that a person at a given age (or at birth) is expected to live in a healthy state throughout his or her remaining lifetime. HE at birth is also termed as healthspan (or health-span). As HE combines both morbidity and mortality, it is often used to estimate whether the prolonged life expectancy in a population is accompanied with better health status. HE can be calculated based on any health indicator, although the literature tends to focus primarily on measures of disability and/or morbidity, unimpaired cognition, or self-rated good health....

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Correspondence to Danan Gu .

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Gu, D., Feng, Q., Hoh, J. (2021). Health Expectancy. In: Gu, D., Dupre, M.E. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_1127-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_1127-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69892-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69892-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Health Expectancy
    Published:
    25 March 2021

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_1127-2

  2. Original

    Health Expectancy
    Published:
    12 November 2020

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_1127-1