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Longevity Bulletin

The Longevity Bulletin aims to provide a regular overview of research into longevity trends and a guide to prospects for long life. It presents and explains actuarial perspectives on population longevity and looks beyond the actuarial world for statistics, research and the latest thinking on related subjects.  The next bulletin will appear in November 2013.

Issue 04, authored by Professor Carol Jagger, focuses on healthy life expectancy.

About the author

Carol Jagger holds the AXA Chair in Epidemiology of Ageing in the Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University. Carol's first degree was in mathematics. She holds an MSc in Statistics from the University of Leeds and a PhD in Statistics from the University of Leicester. From 1981 until 2010 Carol was in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of Leicester. She has an Honorary Visiting Fellowship at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge and is visiting Professor in the Epidemiology of Ageing in the Institute of Primary Care and Health Sciences Research, Keele University.

Carol is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (C.Stat) and Chartered Scientist (CSci), Member of the British Geriatrics Society and a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

Focus on: Healthy life expectancy

One of the key messages in Issue 04 of Longevity Bulletin is that we are all living longer but questions how healthy we are during those extra years. In the past, longer life was generally driven by better health. However, data increasingly highlights that this does not necessarily equate to a healthier life at older ages.

Longevity Bulletin 03 cover
  • Health expectancies add a quality dimension to life expectancy.
  • Differences in health expectancy between countries and regions are often much greater than differences in life expectancy so measuring health disparities by life expectancy differences may underestimate disparities.
  • The difference between the highest and lowest period life expectancy at age 50 in the EU27 countries is 8.5 years for men and 6.9 years for women. Healthy Life Years differ by 14.6 years for men and 15.3 years for women.
  • The UK as a whole appears to be going through a period of compression of disability with disability-free life expectancy at birth rising faster than life expectancy, at least for men, though Scotland and Northern Ireland are experiencing an expansion.
  • Recent trends in the US are more consistent with a scenario of dynamic equilibrium, with more years free of disability but no increase in the age of onset of disability.

 

Longevity research news

A roundup of recently published research selected for its relevance to longevity knowledge and interest to Bulletin readers. Reviews publication of Bayesian probabilistic national population projections and some recent key papers on risk factors for mortality.

News from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries

Reviews the latest news, including the Sessional Research Event on mortality improvement by socio-economic circumstances in England (1982 to 2006), news from the CMI and the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries' mortality and morbidity review.

More information about the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries' events can be found at: www.actuaries.org.uk/events

To receive future issues, email: longevitybulletin@actuaries.org.uk