The data focus on the quality of life spent in a healthy state, rather than the quantity of life, as measured by life expectancy. As such, healthy life years are an important measure of the relative health of people in the European Union.
In the EU as a whole, the number of healthy life years at birth in 2022 was 62.8 years for women and 62.4 years for men, a gender gap of 0.4 years.
For Latvia, the figures were 55.4 years for women (the second-worst figure in the EU after Denmark's 54.6 years) and 53.0 years for men (the absolute worst in the EU), a gap of 2.4 years.
As previously reported, the figures for total life expectancy are also pretty concerning.
