Unmet needs for assistance with ADLs and IADLs: A measure of healthy life expectancy

Measures of healthy life expectancy have been developed over the last thirty years to evaluate the quality of life of an increasing life expectancy. These measures are usually accounting for prevalence rates of either disability or physical dependence in performing everyday activities. Although they allow for a better assessment of quality of life, they are not reflecting the fact that a disabled person might be receiving adequate or inadequate assistance for these activities. In a context of population aging, where our health care system will have to deal more and more with chronic disease instead of acute disease, it is imperative to develop a measure that will account for the adequacy of the assistance provided to the disabled elderly population. Using data from the 1986 Health and Activity Limitation Survey, we are introducing a measure of healthy life expectancy which will fill this gap. We present the construction of this measure of population health and discuss it's usefulness in assessing policies at a macro level.