Inequalities in healthy life years in the EU25: monitoring the Lisbon strategy target to increase the participation of older people in the labour market

Carol Jagger, University of Leicester
Clare Gillies, University of Leicester

A target for the European Union (Lisbon Strategy) is to increase the proportion of older people (aged 55-64) in the labour market. However, although life expectancy in Europe is increasing, it remains unclear whether the majority of extra years are healthy ones. Using the new EU structural indicator Healthy Life Years (HLY), we have already shown that the range in HLY at age 50 in 2005 was 14.5 years for men and 13.7 years for women, wider than the total remaining years of life at age 50 of 9.1 years for men and 6.1 years for women. In this paper we look more closely at the Lisbon Strategy target and explore the variation in partial life and healthy life expectancies between 55 and 64 years of age for the EU25 countries in both 2005 and 2006, relating this to macro-level indicators of wealth, education and employment through meta-regression.