Longer Life, Better Health?
Trends in health expectancy, New Zealand 1996–2001

Public Health Intelligence Occasional Bulletin No 23

ISBN 0-478-25750-3 (Book)
ISBN 0-478-25753-8 (Internet)

HP 4004

Date of publication: November 2004

Monitoring population health (in terms of both level and distribution) is essential for assessing the performance of the health system. Summary measures of population health, such as health expectancy, play a crucial role in this process by providing an overall measure of system performance.

The health and life expectancy results presented in this report, Longer Life, Better Health? Trends in health expectancy, New Zealand 1996-2001, provide an evidence-based perspective on whether the New Zealand population became healthier over the period from 1996 to 2001, and how any health gain achieved was distributed across age, gender and ethnic groups.

Most pleasing has been the rapid improvement in Maori life expectancy over this period. However, of concern is that a high proportion of the years of life gained by males – both Maori and non-Maori – were spent in states of poor health (1.7 out of the 1.9 years gained). By contrast, 0.9 out of the 1.4 years gained by females over the 1996–2001 period were spent in states of relatively good health. So the gender gap in health widened even as the gap in survival narrowed.

This analysis of short-term trends in health and life expectancy should be useful in setting the future direction for strategic health policy. As the length of the time series increases, improved projections of health expectancy and greater understanding of its drivers will become possible, further increasing its value for guiding policy.

The health expectancy metric used in this monitoring report provides a summary measure of performance for the health system as a whole, including not only the health sector itself but all sectors whose actions contribute substantively to population health outcomes. So policy makers, advisors and researchers across the social policy spectrum may find this report useful when reflecting on their own contribution – potential or realised – to the achievement of population health gain and the reduction in health inequalities.

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