Country-Level Socioeconomic Indicators Associated with Healthy Life Expectancy: Income, Urbanization, Schooling, and Internet Users: 2000–2012

This study confirms the associations between healthy life expectancy (HLE) and country-level socioeconomic factors. Our analysis is based on HLE data of 178 countries obtained from the World Health Organization. Data on country-level socioeconomic indicators were obtained from the World Bank database and the United Nations. The associations between socioeconomic indicators and HLE are assessed using Pearson’s correlation coefficients and multiple regression models. Our findings show significant positive correlations between HLE and the following country-level socioeconomic factors: national income level (INI: r = 0.775, p = 0.001), urban population (UP: r = 0.711, p = 0.001), mean years of schooling (MYS: r = 0.756, p = 0.001), and internet users (IU: r = 0.795, p = 0.001). Predictors of female and male HLE are used to build a model that predicts HLE by overall higher levels of INI, UP, MYS, and IU (R² = 0.724, p < 0.001). Based on our results, country-level socioeconomic indicators seem to have an important effect on healthy life expectancy.