Bayesian projection of cohort healthy life expectancies with long-term care insurance data

Over the past few decades, life expectancy has increased across the world. However, such a rise in longevity appears to be accompanied by a decline in health at advanced ages. This paper investigates future changes in longevity and health status at advanced ages and their interdependence by constructing a multinomial logit model using Japan’s public long-term care insurance data. Given that the decline in mortality at older ages continues, healthy life expectancy has attracted attention as an indicator of good health and well-being instead of life expectancy. We project cohort healthy life expectancies at advanced ages using the smultinomial logit model. We adopt a Bayesian approach to take prediction error into account.