European Health: How Healthy Are We?
Europeans take their health very seriously. Few doubts remain to the priority of health these days within the European Union.
Despite upward trends in health with the new 2007(-2013) European Health Strategy, and a rise in life expectancy, the question still remains: How healthy are we?
A main concern for European people and health surrounds an aging population. This is two-fold in that the emerging European Health Strategy would like to see the aging population work during their golden years.
When an aging population is healthy, it costs us less in terms of health care. If an aging population is healthy to work late into their years, the economy will be successful.
Less strain to the job market ultimately mirrors a successful economy. Unhealthy people aren’t productive. This is the roadblock European people must overcome, due to low birth rates coupled with an increasingly aging population.
The aged can also expect to live longer today than ever before. Yet, is living longer truly resembling a better quality of health and life?
According to a cross-national analysis in 2005, it’s unclear whether the increased life expectancy of Europeans across 25 countries of the European Union is actually spent in health and vitality. Our quality of life and length of life are not necessarily correlated (Jagger, The Lancet, Dec. 20th, 2008).
An aging population, with a long life expectancy but with poor quality of life, is not conducive to the overall health of the parts or the whole. But do the needs of the individual coexist with the needs of the overall European Union? How healthy are we?
This is a very important question considering prior studies haven’t shown ‘career’ as one of the main indicators of a quality of life that the aged considers essential to the personal meaning of their overall lives. Relationships score high, but our careers do not ((Brim, University of Chicago Press, 2004).
Perhaps the answers lie in what our definition of health is. European people and health are essential to the future as the European Union seeks to answer these questions.