Healthy Life Expectancy

HC Deb 19 July 2001 vol 372 cc385-6W

Mr. Frank Field

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the healthy life expectancy at age 65 years for(a) men and (b) women in (i) England and (ii) Great Britain. [5217]

Ruth Kelly

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician. I have asked him to reply.

Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Frank Field, dated 19 July 2001As National Statistician I have been asked to reply to your question concerning healthy life expectancy at age 65 years for (a) men and (b) women in (i) England and (ii) Great Britain. The latest available figures are given in the table. Figures presented use the General Household Survey (GHS) question on self-reported general health, to show the further years in good or fairly good health that a person aged 65 could expect to live.

Healthy life expectancy in years1 at age 65, 19972
	Males	Females
England	11.9	13.3
Great Britain	11.7	13.2
1 Healthy life expectancy combines mortality and morbidity into a single index.
2 Figures for 1997 are based on 1996–98 mortality data and 1996 and 1998 data from the GHS. The figures for Great Britain and the methodology used to calculate them were published in the ONS journal, "Health Statistics Quarterly 07", August 2000.