Changes in Health Expectancies in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, 2004 – 06: A Multistate Life Table Model

The objective of this study is to estimate the period age-specific prevalence of disability. The period prevalence of disability is the proportion of disabled among the survivors of a fictitious cohort subject to the actual age-specific conditions of entering and exiting the disability state based on information from the Survey carried out in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India between 2004 and 2006. The survey was designed to study the process of ageing, in particular the evolution of functional health. The same people were interviewed in a cross-longitudinal survey of 2 waves. The IMaCh program has been used to compute the morbidity transition on estimated life expectancy. The results show that the probability of dying is much higher among the unhealthy than the healthy. It was found that at the younger ages if a person is unhealthy there was change of being recovering from the unhealthy state. But as age increases the chance of recovering is very low. A person attaining the age 60 can expect to live 17.5 years in the healthy state, given the initial condition, but the expectation is reduced to 16.7 years if unhealthy at the age of 60. The corresponding health expectancies for the unhealthy state are 4.2 and 4.9 respectively. The life expectancy in healthy and unhealthy state for women were higher than that of men.