Disability-free life expectancy is the number of years a person can expect to live without being limited in their daily activities. It is measured by the Department of Studies and Statistics of the Social Ministries.
At 65, a man can expect to live another 11.3 years without being limited in the activities of daily life, and a woman 12.6 years: this is the result of statistics published Thursday, February 23 by the Department of Studies and statistics from the social ministries (Drees), based on data from 2021. This disability-free life expectancy has increased since 2008, by two years and eight months for men and two years and seven months for women, underlines the Drees In this study (PDF).
Among the years remaining to be lived at age 65, the proportion of those that will be lived without disability rose from 47.7% to 59.3% between 2008 and 2021 for men. For women, it went from 44.7% to 54.4%. In 2020, the most recent year for which this data is available for all European countries, France ranked tenth among the countries of the European Union with 27 members, with a level above the European average (+8 month).
“Incapacity in the gestures of daily life”
In France, recalls the DREES, “life expectancy at birth is steadily increasing, but not all of these years are necessarily lived in ‘good health'”. This is why since 2018 this department has published an indicator that measures life expectancy in good health. “This indicator measures the number of years that a person can expect to live without suffering from a disability in the gestures of daily life”, specifies the Drees.
To assess it, the Statistics on Resources and Living Conditions (SRCV) services interviewed, by telephone, in 2021, a sample of 17,000 “ordinary households residing in metropolitan France”to whom they asked this question: “Have you been limited, for at least six months, because of a health problem, in the activities that people usually do?” “People answering ‘Yes, strongly’ or ‘Yes, but not strongly’ are considered to have a disability(ies)explains the Drees. This question makes it possible more specifically to identify people with disabilities, defined as those who answer: ‘Yes, strongly’.” “We can thus also calculate an indicator of life expectancy without severe disability (i.e. without disability)”summarizes the direction of statistics.