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A new summary measure of population health: the "well-being adjusted health expectancy"

Magdalena Muszynska-Spielauer, Wittgenstein Centre (IIASA, OeAW, Univ. Vienna)
Marc Luy, Vienna Institute of Demography

We propose a new summary measure of population health (SMPH) to which we refer as "well-being-adjusted healthy life expectancy" (WAHE). It combines health and mortality information into a single indicator with weights that quantify the reduction in well-being associated with decreased health. The advantage of WAHE over other commonly used SMPHs lies in the differentiation between the consequences of health limitations of varying levels of severity and the transparent and simple valuation function. We examine the quality of WAHE applying the two standard criteria for assessing measurement instruments: agreement and reliability. We also study to which extent WAHE is correlated with the most commonly used SMPHs. Data on health and well-being for 29 European countries come from SILC and life tables from Eurostat. We find that WAHE has the highest and significant correlation and is in agreement with all other commonly used SMPHs. We also show that, together with other commonly used SMPHs, WAHE in all its variants forms a group of indicators that is reliable to study population health in European countries. We conclude that WAHE has several advantages over the other SMPHs and suggest to use it as a universal health indicator for descriptive use in public health.

Keywords: Health and morbidity, Methodology, Policy

See paper.

  Presented in Session 187. Wellbeing and Mental Health Outcomes: Measurements and Determinants