1.3. Quality of survival: international comparisons
Although life expectancy at birth in Europe is one of the highest in the world and equal to 76.1 years for men and 82.2 years for women, too many years are still spent with severe or moderate impairments in performing activities of daily living. On average, women live 6 years longer than men. The differentials observed between men and women tend to be significantly reduced when considering an indicator that measures the quality of life lived. This is true both for the mean European value and those for the various nations considered individually. Specifically, in Italy in 2007, although women on average lived 5.5 years longer than men (84.2 years compared to 78.7), they live an average of 6.4 years more with disability (22.3 years compared to 15.9).
The data processed by Eurostat shows clear differences between Member States in terms of disability-free life expectancy. The mean European value is 61.5 years for men; however, it varies from a minimum of 52 years in Latvia and Slovakia to a maximum of 71 years in Iceland. Within the European context, Italian men are characterised by high longevity (third only to Icelandic and Swedish men), but they have low value, compared to the European average, as regards the percentage of healthy life years (79.6%). Disability-free life expectancy is 62.8 years, one year higher than the European average.
As mentioned previously, amongst EU27 women, the mean percentage of disability-free years out of the total years lived is lower than that observed for men and equal to 75.8%. Italian women have one of the longest overall survival values in Europe: the value of 84.2 years is lower only than those observed for Spanish (84.3 years) and French women (84.9%), however, similarly to the situation for Italian men, the percentage of disability-free years (73.5%) is lower than the European value. Amongst women, disability-free life expectancy is 61.9 years, whereas the corresponding EU-27 value is 62.3 years.
The life expectancy for a 65 year-old citizen living in the 27 countries of the EU is 17 years for a man and 20.5 years for a woman. However, the 3.5-year female advantage is outweighed when considering disability-free years: a 65-year-old man and woman can count on living 8.7 and 8.9 years without severe or moderate impairment in their activities of daily living, respectively.
The reduction in gender differentials observed when switching from life expectancy to HLY is true for all the nations considered: in Mediterranean countries the situation is overturned and the healthy life years value is higher in men. In Italy, women and men have a life expectancy at 65 years of 21.8 and 18 years, respectively and a disability-free life expectancy of 7.2 and 7.9 years, respectively.