WHO methods for life expectancy and healthy life expectancy

WHO methods for life expectancy and healthy life expectancy

Department of Health Statistics and Information Systems WHO, Geneva March 2014

Global Health Estimates Technical Paper WHO/HIS/HSI/GHE/2014.5

Acknowledgments

This Technical Report was written by Colin Mathers and Jessica Ho with inputs and assistance from Wahyu Retno Mahanani, Doris Ma Fat and Dan Hogan. WHO life tables were primarily prepared by Jessica Ho and Colin Mathers of the Mortality and Burden of Disease Unit in the WHO Department of Health Statistics and Information Systems (in the Health Systems and Innovation Cluster of WHO, Geneva). We also drew on prior life table work carried out by Mie Inoue for the previous revision to year 2011, and on advice and inputs from the Interagency Group on Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME), the UN Population Division and the UN Population Division. We would particularly like to note the assistance and inputs provided by Kirill Andreev, Ties Boerma, Richard Garfield, Patrick Gerland, Peter Ghys, Danan Gu, Ken Hill, Mie Inoue, Nan Li, Mary Mahy, Francois Pelletier, Thomas Spoorenberg, John Stover, Tessa Wardlaw, John Wilmoth and Danzhen You.

Estimates and analysis are available at: For further information about the estimates and methods, please contact healthstat@who.int

In this series 1. WHO methods and data sources for life tables 1990-2011 (Global Health Estimates Technical Paper WHO/HIS/HSI/GHE/2013.1) 2. WHO-CHERG methods and data sources for child causes of death 2000-2011 (Global Health Estimates Technical Paper WHO/HIS/HSI/GHE/2013.2) 3. WHO methods and data sources for global causes of death 2000-2011 (Global Health Estimates Technical Paper WHO/HIS/HSI/GHE/2013.3) 4. WHO methods and data sources for global burden of disease estimates 2000-2011 (Global Health Estimates Technical Paper WHO/HIS/HSI/GHE/2013.4)

Contents

Acknowledgments......................................................................................................................................... 2 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 1 2 Concepts and definitions ...................................................................................................................... 1 3 Neonatal, Infant and Under-five mortality........................................................................................... 2

3.1 Data sources and adjustments ...................................................................................................... 2 3.2 B3 method ..................................................................................................................................... 3 3.3 Estimates by sex ............................................................................................................................ 4 3.4 Neonatal mortality ........................................................................................................................ 4 4 Life table methodology ......................................................................................................................... 5 4.1 Life tables based on death rates computed from civil registration data ...................................... 5 4.2 Life tables for countries with other information on levels of adult mortality .............................. 6 4.3 Life tables for countries with high levels of HIV mortality ............................................................ 7 4.4 Conflicts and natural disasters ...................................................................................................... 7 5 WHO reporting on levels of mortality and life expectancies................................................................ 9 6 Health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE)..............................................................................................10 6.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 10 6.2 Method for calculation of health-adjusted life expectancy........................................................10 6.3 WHO estimates of HALE for years 2000 and 2012 ..................................................................... 12 .................................................................................................................................................................... 14 References .................................................................................................................................................. 15 Annex Table A: Data sources and methods for WHO Life Tables ............................................................... 18

1 Introduction

The World Health Organization (WHO) began producing annual life tables for all Member States in 1999. These life tables are a basic input to all WHO estimates of global, regional and country-level patterns and trends in all-cause and cause-specific mortality. After the publication of life tables for years to 2009 in the 2011 edition of World Health Statistics, WHO has shifted to a two year cycle for the updating of life tables for all Member States, and will move towards alignment of this revision cycle with that of the World Population Prospects produced biennially by the UN Population Division.

These life tables are available on the WHO Global Health Observatory (1) for the years 1990, 2000 and 2012 as of April 2014 and in World Health Statistics 2014. The following basic indicators are printed in the World Health Statistics (2) annual publication released each May:

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life expectancy at birth, by sex

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life expectancy at age 60, by sex

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the probability of dying between ages 15 and 60, by sex

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the probability of dying between ages 0 and 5 (released annually by UN IGME, see section 3).

This technical report summarizes the methods and data sources used.

2 Concepts and definitions

Abridged life table: definitions of columns.

Age age intervals x to x+n, where x= 0, 1, 5,....., 95, 100 years and n is the width of the age interval in years.

nMx age-specific death rates calculated from information on deaths among persons aged x to x+n during a given year and the population aged x to x+n at the mid-point of the same year.

nqx probability of dying between exact ages x and x+n.

lx

number of people alive at exact age x among a hypothetical birth cohort of

100 000.

nLx total number of person-years lived between exact ages x and x+n.

ndx number of life table deaths in the age interval marked x to x+n.

Tx total number of person-years lived after age x.

ex expected average number of years of life left for a person age x.

World Health Organization

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