As the old saying goes, the one certainties in life are death and taxes. Although death is inevitable, the standard of life until death often will depend on the person.
This is what our team on the Goldenson Center for Actuarial Research has focused on a rigorous measure of quality of life. How many more years of healthy life do you have before you turn into unhealthy?
Everyone understands the advantages of living a protracted, healthy life, however it also has implications for industry and society. Medical costs, financial planning and health support services are directly linked to the health of a person or community.
We call this measure of quality of life “healthy life expectancy” and its complement “healthy life expectancy.” We define entering an unhealthy state as a state of disability so severe that there is no such thing as a recovery, so you remain unhealthy until you die.
It follows that life expectancy – the measure of the entire number of future years an individual will live – is just the sum of two years.
Imagine a healthy 60-year-old man who exercises usually, eats a healthy weight-reduction plan, has a traditional body mass index, and sleeps not less than eight hours an evening. By our estimates, he could have a further 13 years of healthy life in comparison with his unhealthy counterpart. It’s one other 13 years of good life with family and family members.
This is kind of a surprising finding, not only because of the numerous difference in healthy life expectancy between these two individuals, but in addition because this difference is as a consequence of lifestyle decisions over which the person has control.
So what aspects influence longer healthy life expectancy? Two non-lifestyle aspects are age and gender. Assuming all other aspects are constant, healthy life expectancy decreases with age. Women have longer healthy life expectancy in comparison with men.
We’ve already seen that weight-reduction plan, exercise and getting enough sleep positively impact healthy life expectancy. Other positive aspects that we included in our model include education level, income level, perceived health, moderate alcohol consumption, not smoking, and no type 2 diabetes. The higher the education and income levels, the longer the typical healthy life expectancy. It can also be helpful to have a positive perception of your health.
Want to know your individual estimates of the healthy years ahead? We have developed free online tool which allows you to calculate healthy, unhealthy and total life expectancy. This is a piece in progress.
This is the primary measurement tool of this sort that has been developed. Although it is just too early to confirm the accuracy of our calculations using real data, we have made every effort to be sure that the model assumptions are based on established actuarial sources and that the modeling results are logical and consistent.
It needs to be noted that healthy life expectancy is barely a prediction based on knowledge. Unforeseen events – like being hit by a truck – can invalidate these estimates, regardless of how well you manage your lifestyle habits. There can also be other unmeasured aspects influencing healthy life expectancy that we didn’t account for in our model, corresponding to stress levels, positive attitudes about life, or social connections.
Dry
Our team plans to explore some of the sensible applications of healthy life expectancy in industry.
For example, the concept of healthy life expectancy may help you plan your retirement funds. Annual retirement expenses mustn’t remain the identical throughout life expectancy. More discretionary retirement spending should occur in healthy years and fewer in unhealthy years, while spending on basic expenses should increase in unhealthy years.
Insurance products can be designed with healthy life expectancy indicators in mind. This can protect an individual from additional basic living expenses during an unhealthy period. One such product could also be deferred long-term care or a short lived deferred annuity, where the deferred period covers the healthy life expectancy and the temporary cover covers the unhealthy period. This could also be a less expensive and more obligatory product in comparison with what’s currently available in the marketplace.
Because healthy life expectancy can also be related to quality of life and health level, a relative indicator could compare an individual’s performance with a benchmark healthy life expectancy for an individual with “average” characteristics. This can then be used as an insurance tool and to predict future healthcare costs. Our model may also function a patient screening tool for healthcare providers, incorporating more detailed lifestyle and dietary details, in addition to details about prior medical history.
We hope that other researchers and practitioners will proceed to construct on this. Then society could focus not only on extending life, but in addition on extending its quality, using our model. As the saying goes: “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. This is life in your years.”