Live longer, suffer more? Trends in life expectancy and health

During the 20th century, life expectancy has been continuously increasing with the majority of the additional years resulting from decreasing mortality among the old and oldest old in the last few decades. Two phases of convergence and divergence in European mortality have been identified, with a possible new phase of divergence taking place among the oldest old. Over this period, women have always been living longer than men. Explanations for this phenomenon include not only biological factors and differences in lifestyle and health care utilization, but also differences in reporting patterns. Trends in health do not follow a clear direction. Reasons are the different dimensions of health as well as inadequate data. In general, the prevalence of morbidity has been increasing, while functional limitations and ADL disabilities have been decreasing. Due to a lack of data, no information exists for trends among the oldest old at age 80 and above. In absolute terms, the number of healthy years has been increasing with increasing life expectancy. In relative terms, they have been stable, probably slightly increasing in some countries. These trends suggest that increasing life expectancy does not result in an increase in morbidity.