Healthy life expectancy

Known criticisms of this statistic

Every statistic embodies method choices, and the substantive critiques of those choices are part of understanding the number. These are documented positions — each linked to who makes it. Listing a criticism is not endorsing it; we take no side.

• The health half of the measure is a survey answer, and the Dutch public-health portal itself calls it 'very subjective and culture-dependent' — recommending the EU's activity-limitation measure for any comparison between countries. This series is for tracking the Netherlands over time, not for rankings.

  — Staat van Volksgezondheid en Zorg (RIVM/VWS/CBS portal) · StaatVenZ: levensverwachting in goed ervaren gezondheid

• Even the EU's harmonized variant shifts by about a year per country once differences in how people answer health questions are corrected for — the study's authors conclude such indicators should monitor health within a country, not compare across them. The critique applies a fortiori to a purely self-rated measure like this one.

  — Luy, Di Giulio & Minagawa, European Journal of Public Health (2023) · EJPH: reporting heterogeneity and Healthy Life Years

• The Sullivan method behind the number assumes health prevalence is stable: when health is actually improving or worsening, the estimate diverges from what any real cohort will experience — a documented bias of the method, which CBS's own methodology note does not discuss.

  — Imai & King (JASA) and the Robine et al. methods literature · On the estimation of disability-free life expectancy

• The underlying health survey was redesigned in 2014, and CBS itself warns that outcomes from 2014 onwards must be compared with earlier years only with caution — the long series is stitched across documented method breaks.

  — CBS (Gezondheidsenquête methodology notes) · CBS: Gezondheidsenquête vanaf 2014

Source & method

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