Healthy Life Expectancy for Older Canadians Reversed Course Before the Pandemic, Analysis Finds
A column in The Globe and Mail by Frederick Vettese shows that Healthy Life Expectancy at age 65 rose until 2017 but began declining in 2019, before the pandemic. Significant disparities persist by income and gender.
Healthy Life Expectancy (HLE) for Canadians aged 65 increased steadily until 2017 but began to decline in 2019, a downward trend that continued through 2023, according to an analysis published in The Globe and Mail by Frederick Vettese.
HLE is defined as the number of years a person is expected to live in good health, taking into account factors such as vision, hearing, speech, ambulation, dexterity, emotion, cognition, and pain. The analysis measures HLE from age 65 rather than from birth, as this starting point is considered more relevant to retirees and near-retirees who need to know how many healthy years they can expect for retirement planning.
Between 2000 and 2017, HLE increased for both sexes and across income levels. For high-income men specifically, HLE rose by more than two years during that period. The gains prior to 2017 are suspected to be driven by medical advances and better lifestyle choices, particularly the decline in smoking prevalence.
However, the data reveals that HLE was already lower in 2019 than it was in 2017. While the COVID-19 pandemic is cited as an obvious factor for recent declines, the drop began before the pandemic started. This reversal raises concerns about long-term health outcomes beyond the effects of the pandemic alone.
The analysis also highlights significant disparities based on income and gender. Women in the top income quintile—the top 20 per cent of earners—generally have the longest HLE, while men in the bottom income quintile have the shortest. Despite these extremes, the difference in HLE between the top and middle income quintiles is less than two years, and the difference by sex is also less than two years.
Vettese notes that older Canadians typically face five to 10 years of serious health problems at the end of life, underscoring why understanding trends in healthy years is critical for retirement planning.