Trends in financing elderly health care in the European Union

The European Commission (EC) has identified active and healthy ageing (AHA) as a major societal problem common to all European countries. The ageing of European societies is a challenge for initiatives supporting active and healthy aging. One of them is the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Aging. The initiative aims to enable the EU citizens to have healthy, active and independent lives at older ages.  It is expected that the AHA-related actions will increase the healthy life expectancy of EU citizens by two years by 2020. The target is ambitious considering that in 2013 the average life expectancy in EU28 for women who were 65 years old was about 21.3 years, of which only 8.6 years (40.4%) were to be lived in good health. For men, the respective numbers were 17.9 years and 8.5 years (47.5%). The number of years the elderly can live in good health depends on a number of factors.  The factors that are mentioned the most frequently include the level of economic development in the country (GDP per capita), the healthcare system and access to medical services. There are also individual factors, such as the condition of health, educational attainment, the amount of personal income and health-related expenditures.

 This article aims to investigate the relationship between further healthy life expectancy of men and women aged 65 years and older in selected EU countries in the context of the above factors. A multidimensional comparative analysis is conducted using Eurostat data from the years 2005-2013 to study trends in the financing of elderly health care in the EU.