Healthy life years (i12)

In 2021, healthy life expectancy in Belgium stood at 64.6 years. To achieve the sustainable development goal by 2030, this figure must increase. Between 2005 and 2021 the trend is undetermined (November 2023 assessment).

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Healthy life years - Belgium and international comparison

years at birth

 2005201020152016202020212021//20052021//2016
Belgium62.463.364.263.763.864.60.20.3
EU2760.961.862.864.064.063.60.3-0.1
//: Average Growth Rates

break in time series: BE 2019, EU 2008 and 2015; estimates: EU 2005 and 2006

Statbel; Eurostat (2023), Healthy life years [hlth_hlye], https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat (consulted on 27/09/2023).

Healthy life years and life expectancy - Belgium

years at birth

 20052010201520162020202120222021//20052021//2016
healthy62.463.364.263.763.864.6--0.20.3
total79.180.381.181.580.881.981.80.20.1
//: Average Growth Rates

break in time series: BE 2019, EU 2008 and 2015; estimates: EU 2005 and 2006

Statbel; Eurostat (2023), Healthy life years [hlth_hlye] et Mortality and life expectancy statistics [demo_mlexpec], https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat (consulted on 27/09/2023).

Healthy life years by sex - Belgium

years at birth

 2005201020152016202020212021//20052021//2016
females62.362.664.063.764.064.40.20.2
males62.464.064.463.663.664.80.20.4
//: Average Growth Rates

break in time series: 2019

Statbel; Eurostat (2023), Healthy life years [hlth_hlye], https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat (consulted on 27/09/2023).

Definition: healthy life expectancy measures the number of years a person of a given age can expect to live without serious or moderate health problems. It is calculated on the basis of life expectancy and surveys assessing the share of people who consider themselves in good or poor health and is expressed in years. The data presented here are drawn from mortality statistics and from data on perceived health collected from the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey (EU-SILC). Statistics Belgium organises this EU-harmonised survey in Belgium and makes the results available, in particular to Eurostat. The data used here come from Eurostat, which publishes detailed and comparable results between EU Member States. Since these data are based on surveys, a margin of uncertainty must be taken into account. The confidence intervals for these data are available on request from Statistics Belgium.

Goal: healthy life expectancy must increase.

The Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs adopted by the UN in 2015 include goal 3: “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

The Federal Long-Term Strategic Vision for Sustainable Development includes objective 4: "Healthy life expectancy will have increased compared to 2010. The gap in healthy life expectancy by education level and gender will be reduced by 50% on average” (Belgian Official Gazette, 08/10/2013).

International comparison: the healthy life expectancy in the European Union (EU27) is quite stable between 2005 and 2014, on average 61.3 years. Subsequently, there is an increase to 64.6 years in 2019. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the indicator decreases to 64.0 years in 2020 and 63.6 years in 2021. When Member States are divided into three groups, Belgium is part of the group with average performance and outperforms the European average in 2021. In that year, Malta ranked first with 68.7 years and Latvia last with 53.8 years.

UN indicator: the selected indicator does not correspond to any monitoring indicator for the SDGs but is related to goal 3 since it measures the population health status.

Sources

More information is available in French and Dutch.