The Gap in Life Expectancy of Russians and European Nations: an Empirical Evidence

This paper investigates the nature of the difference in healthy life expectancy (HLE) of Russian and European nations. To answer the research question, we use the two-stage methodology which consists of sex-specific life table construction and calculation of healthy life expectancy using the Sullivan method. The second stage is the decomposition of the difference in health expectancy in five-year age groups between two populations. This study is based on five data sources: the World Value Survey (WVS), the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS), WHO Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE), Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which contain the data on self-assessed health and self-reported physical performance, and Human Mortality Database which includes the information on the number of deaths, causes of death and population. It was found that at older ages the male-female gap between Western European nations and the Russian Federation almost disappeared. Health component makes a greater contribution to the difference between healthy life expectancy for women, while for males the difference is due to the high mortality rate. Finally, objective measurement gives a smaller women-men gap in healthy life expectancy than subjective measurement.