THE EXPECTATION OF LIFE WITHOUT DISABILITY IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

This paper calculates the Expectation of Life without Disability for Sri Lanka. No one has
ever attempted to calculate health expectancies up to now for Sri Lanka and hence, this paper
will be the first of its kind and can be regarded as a great contribution to the field of Sri
Lankan demography. Life expectancy is composed of lengths of time spent in different states
of health until death. These lengths of time in different states of health are health
expectancies and they combine information on both mortality and morbidity. The present
paper contains estimates of "Disability-Free Life Expectancy" calculated using a method
devised by Sullivan and applicable to any state of health definition. The Sullivan health
expectancy reflects the current health of a real population adjusted for mortality levels and it
is independent of age structure. Health expectancy calculated by Sullivan’s method is the
number of remaining years, at a particular age, which an individual can expect to live in a
healthy state. The data used were the age-specific prevalence (proportions) of the population
in unhealthy state, and age-specific mortality information taken from a period life table.
Sullivan health expectancy is not very sensitive to the size of the age groups, and thus an
abridged life table was used. It was observed that the total life expectancy for men and
women was 72 and 78.6 years, respectively, for the 2011-13 period. The analysis on healthy
life expectancy showed that it is 64.2 for males and 67.1 for females. This suggests that the
gap between total life expectancy was 6.6 years between men and women but the health
expectancy was only 2.9 years. In addition, proportion of life spent in disability-free state was
85.4 for women and 89.1 for men. This indicates that women spent more time in disability
state compared to men. In other words, the majority of extra years of life among females were
spent in poor health; females live 6.6 years longer than males, but only had 2.9 years longer
in good health.