Chronic Disease-Free Life Expectancy of Middle-aged and Elderly Koreans between 2005 and 2010

Abstract

As life expectancy in South Korea has increased rapidly, scholars have investigated whether additional years of life that the elderly gained were healthy years or not by estimating healthy life expectancy. However, most health attributes used in estimating healthy life expectancy are self-reported health from survey data, which has a higher risk of response errors in reporting health. In light of this, we use more “objective” measures of health, the health examination results of 7 major chronic diseases. With the 2005-2010 health examination data, we examine whether and how many elongated life expectancy of middle-aged and elderly Koreans experienced between 2005 and 2010 are from free of chronic disease, and whether or not there are any gender differences. We found that increases in life expectancy between 2005 and 2010 are mostly due to chronic disease-free life expectancy (“healthy aging”), and these health advantages are enjoyed by both men and women. However, we still observe the male-female health survival paradox even after eliminating errors of reporting health by gender.