Active Life Expectancy, Gender, and Education among Elderly Indonesians

Mira M. Hidajat, Pennsylvania State University
Yasuhiko Saito, Nihon University
Mark D. Hayward, Pennsylvania State University

The expected growth in the size of Indonesia's elderly population heightens the importance of understanding potential changes in this population's burden of disease. Growing numbers of elderly living with chronic health problems potentially strain family support systems as well as health care institutions' abilities to meet their health care needs. In this paper, we lay the initial groundwork for anticipating Indonesia's future burden of disease by developing a demographic model of population health. We develop this model within the analytic framework of a Markov-based multistate life table model to calculate an important indicator of the burden of disease, the expected years of active life of elderly Indonesians. Active life expectancy refers to the years of expected life free from major functional problems. We gain additional insights into future changes in disease burden by examining educational differences in active life. We pay special attention to gender's association with active life.