Average Hungarians not healthy anymore when they retire

Most Hungarians are not healthy anymore when they reach their 60th birthday and, unfortunately, the number of healthy years in Hungary is much less than the European average. 

It is good to be born in Sweden

According to the Eurostat, in 2016, the number of years a person is expected to continue to live in a healthy condition at birth in the European Union (EU) was estimated to be

64.2 years for women and 63.5 years for men.

Life expectancy for women in the EU was, on average, 5.4 years longer than that for men in 2016. However, most of these additional years tend to be lived with activity limitation, whereas on average, men tend to spend a greater proportion of their shorter lives free from activity limitation.

The EU country with the highest number of healthy life years in 2016 for both women and men was

Sweden (73.3 years for women, 73.0 for men).

In contrast, Latvia had the lowest number of healthy life years for women (54.9 years) and men (52.3 years).

Eurostat cleared that the number of healthy life years at birth was higher for women than for men in 20 of the EU Member States, with the difference between the sexes generally relatively small. Within those countries, there were 4 Member States where the gap was more than 3 years: Bulgaria (+3.5 years), Estonia (+4.6 years), Lithuania (+3.2 years) and Poland (+3.3 years).

However, there were also seven countries where

the number of healthy life years for women was lower than for men.

The most significant differences were in the Netherlands (- 5.0 years), Luxembourg and Portugal (both – 2.5 years), and Finland (- 2.1 years).

Healthy life years at birth. Unfortunately, Hungary is in the second half of both lists. Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/9/9e/Healthy_life_years_at_birth-01.jpg

Hungary remained at the bottom of the list

Across the EU Member States, life expectancy at birth for women in 2016 ranged between 78.5 years in Bulgaria and 86.3 years in Spain; a difference of 7.8 years. A similar comparison for men shows that the lowest level of life expectancy in 2016 was recorded in Lithuania 69.5 years and the highest in Italy 81.0 years; a range of 11.5 years.

In the case of Hungary, women can expect 60.2 healthy life years at birth, whereas this number is 59.5 regarding men. These results were enough only for the 19th position in the case of women and for the 23rd in the case of men on the list. Regarding the neighbouring countries,

only Romania precedes Hungary

because the number of healthy life years of men is 0.3 years more there than in Hungary. In the case of the V4 countries, both Poland and the Czech Republic precedes Hungary while Slovakia fell behind in both sexes.

As we reported before, WHO reported different numbers. According to them, Hungary is also at the bottom of the list of the European countries regarding the number of healthy life years Hungarians can expect. However, they found then that the average Hungarian can expect approximately 66.8 healthy years in their lives which is significantly higher than the Eurostat’s 60.2 and 59.5.

Source: ec.europa.eu/eurostat