Healthy Life Expectancy in People with and without Diabetes in Latin America and the Caribbean

Flavia Andrade, University of Wisconsin at Madison

This paper estimates diabetes-free life expectancy in Latin America and the Caribbean using data from two large surveys (SABE and MHAS). It also investigates the differences in total life expectancy, disability-free life expectancy, and disabled life expectancy between diabetics and non-diabetics. Results show that elderly individuals are expected to live a large proportion of their lives with diabetes. For example, men and women at age 60 in Mexico City can expect to live about 20% of their remaining years of life with diabetes. Data from Mexico show that diabetes reduces total and active life expectancy (at age 50) in eight years. Diabetics are also more likely to live a higher percentage of their lives with functional disability: disabled life expectancy (measured by activities of daily living) represents 17% of the remaining lives of diabetics and 12% of non-diabetics. Diabetes significantly shortens total and active life expectancy, which imposes considerable economic and social costs.