3

Over the last thirty years, researchers and public health actors have been investigating the potential health impact of increasing life expectancy: are we gaining healthy years or do we live longer with diseases? These questions arise as a consequence of increased survival to older ages at which health problems are common, and increased survival with diseases and disabilities whose lethality has decreased. In response to these questions, health expectancy indicators now provide a measure of both the quantitative and the qualitative dimensions of the years lived. And “healthy-life years,” based on a functional health measurement, have been added to the European Union’s list of structural indicators. Calculated annually since 2008, they track the concomitant changes in life expectancy and years lived with and without activity limitations in European countries and shed light on the disparities between countries.