N° 17/2012 The new European indicator on healthy life years (HLY)

Life expectancy measures how many years a person can expect to live from a given age assuming mortality conditions remain unchanged. If life expectancy has turned out to be a commonly used demographic indicator, it cannot answer the question whether extra years of life are spent in good or bad health conditions. That’s why a new European structural indicator has been developed measuring how many years of life a person is expected to spend in a healthy condition (Healthy Life Years - HLY). Contrary to life expectancy, which is a quantitative measure, this new indicator focuses on quality of life.