Multi country investigation of the Healthy Life Expectancy

The progressive increase in longevity in modern society is the result of continuous progress in medicine, nutrition and technology. However, the rapid increase in life expectancy is inevitably associated with the increase in the incidence of diseases related to old age. Healthy Life Expectancy (HLE) is an indicator that measures the number of years individuals are expected to live free from disease or disability. Forecasting HLE is essential to ensure the stability of health systems, the sustainability of pension systems, plan the provision of health care to increasingly elderly populations, and appropriately price Long Term Care products. HLE is also linked to the degree of healthcare that is directed towards prevention and the effectiveness and efficiency of the healthcare system. In this regard, notable differences can be seen between developed and developing countries. In this paper, we propose a measure of the difference between HLE in different countries, the HLE Gap Ratio, across some populations collected in the Global Burden of Desease database. With the aim of highlighting similarities and differences between the countries considered, we apply a functional clustering method to the multivariate time series of the HLE Gap. Thus, we carry out HLE Gap forecasting for some countries. The results presented focus on some countries with high HLE Gap suggesting the need for appropriate interventions in the healthcare system.