§ Mr. FieldTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the healthy life expectancy of people aged 65 years. [108356]
§ Miss Melanie JohnsonThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the Director of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to reply.
Letter from Tim Holt to Mr. Frank Field, dated 3 February 2000:
As Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your parliamentary question on the healthy life expectancy of people aged 65 years.Healthy life expectancy combines mortality and morbidity into a single index. Using the General Household Survey question on self-reported general health, ONS has calculated that in England in 19951 a woman aged 65 could expect to live a further 13.2 years in good or fairly good health, and a man aged 65 could expect to live a further 11.4 years in good or fairly good health. This compares with total life expectancy figures at age 65 of 18.4 and 14.8 years for women and men respectively.The full set of results from this analysis and the methodology used will be published in the ONS journal, Health Statistics Quarterly, later this year.1 Using data for 1994–96