Greece has seen its average lifespan increase, but healthy life has not improved at the same rate. In 2023, country’s average morbidity gap—the difference between overall longevity and the number of years expected to be lived in good health—stood at 11.9 years.
That means people in the country can expect to spend nearly 12 years of their lives with illness, disability, or another form of impaired health. The gap stood at 10 years in 1990. Over the following three decades, it increased by 1.9 years, or approximately 18%.
As a result, Greeks spent an estimated 14.7% of their lives in poor health in 2023, compared with 13% in 1990. Greece now sits near the middle of the Western European range, according to figures connected to the study.
What is the morbidity gap?
The morbidity gap measures the difference between lifespan and healthy life expectancy.
Life expectancy estimates the total number of years a person is expected to live. Healthy life expectancy, by contrast, estimates how many of those years are likely to be lived in good health.
Therefore, a widening gap indicates that longevity is increasing more rapidly than healthy longevity. People may be surviving for longer, but they are also living more years with chronic disease, disability, pain, sensory loss, or reduced physical and mental function.
For Greece, the trend creates a clear public health challenge. Longer lives represent an important achievement, yet the benefits of longevity are weakened when a growing share of those years is marked by poor health.
Greece reflects the global gap between lifespan and healthy life
The findings come from a systematic analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, published in The Lancet Public Health. Researchers examined morbidity-gap trends in 204 countries and territories between 1990 and 2023.
Worldwide, life expectancy at birth rose from 64.6 years in 1990 to 73.8 years in 2023. During the same period, healthy life expectancy increased from 55.9 to 63.1 years. However, the improvement in healthy life did not keep pace with the rise in total lifespan.
Consequently, the global morbidity gap expanded from 8.8 years in 1990 to 10.7 years in 2023. This represented an increase of 1.9 years, or 21.9%.
The proportion of life spent in poor health also increased, rising from 13.6% in 1990 to 14.5% in 2023. Although the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily reduced both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, it did not reverse the longer-term trend.
Greece ranks near the western european average for the gap between lifespan and healthy life
Greece’s morbidity gap of 11.9 years places it close to Germany, where the same figure was reported for 2023. However, the gap was wider in several other Western European countries. It reached 12.5 years in France, 12.7 years in the United Kingdom, and 12.9 years in the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, Italy recorded a slightly narrower gap of 11.8 years. Spain’s gap stood at 12.1 years. Measured as a share of total lifespan, Greece and Germany both recorded 14.7%. The corresponding proportion reached 15.2% in France and 15.7% in both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Italy stood at 14.2%, while Spain recorded 14.5%.
These comparisons show that Greece is not an outlier within Western Europe. Nevertheless, the rise from 10 to 11.9 years confirms that the country has not succeeded in compressing ill health into a shorter period at the end of life. Instead, the number of years lived with health problems has expanded.
Chronic conditions drive the loss of healthy years
Across Europe, the study identified largely nonfatal chronic conditions as major contributors to the morbidity gap. Musculoskeletal disorders, particularly lower back pain, play an important role.
Mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety, also account for a substantial share of years lived in poor health. Other leading contributors include age-related hearing loss and injuries caused by falls.
These conditions do not always lead directly to death. However, they can restrict movement, independence, communication, work, and participation in everyday life for prolonged periods.
Moreover, several major risk factors were linked to the widening gap. These included high blood glucose, a high body mass index, and smoking. At the global level, childhood and maternal undernutrition also remained significant contributors.
For Greece, these findings underline the importance of addressing conditions that reduce quality of life even when they are not immediately fatal.
Women live longer but spend more years in poor health
The study also found a consistent difference between women and men across every world region.
Globally, women had a morbidity gap of 12.1 years in 2023, compared with 9.3 years for men. Women generally lived longer, but they also spent more years with illness or disability.
This pattern appeared across all socioeconomic groups examined by the researchers. However, these figures are global averages and should not be described as Greece-specific estimates.
The broader finding remains relevant to Greece because it shows that improvements in female longevity do not automatically produce an equivalent increase in years lived in full health.
Poor health extends well beyond old age
One of the study’s most significant conclusions is that the widening morbidity gap does not affect only the final years of life.
Instead, years lived with chronic illness and disability are being recorded across adulthood. In other words, the expansion of poor health cannot be explained solely by people surviving into very old age.
This matters because chronic conditions may affect employment, independence, family life, and social participation long before a person reaches the final stage of life.
Therefore, reducing the morbidity gap requires more than better care for older populations. It also requires earlier prevention and treatment throughout adulthood.
Prevention must extend healthy life alongside overall lifespan
The researchers argue that health systems should measure progress not only through deaths prevented or years of life gained, but also through the quality of those additional years. For Greece, this means that high or rising life expectancy cannot serve as the only measure of success.
Greater emphasis is needed on preventing chronic disease, delaying disability, and improving access to rehabilitation, mental health support, and long-term care. Many of the risk factors associated with lost healthy years can either be prevented or managed more effectively.
Nevertheless, the findings should not be interpreted to mean that longer life is undesirable. Rather, they show that gains in survival must be matched by improvements in health, mobility, and independence. Greece has added years to life. The next challenge is to ensure that more healthy life is added to those years.
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