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Indonesia’s social capacity for population health: the educational gap in active life expectancy

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Abstract

In this paper, we lay the initial groundwork for anticipating Indonesia’s future burden of disease by developing a demographic model of population health. We develop this model within the analytic framework of a Markov-based multistate life table model to calculate an important indicator of the burden of disease, the expected years of active life of elderly Indonesians. The magnitude of the gap points to the potential consequences of improvements in the nation’s educational level for the future burden of disease. The results show that having some education increases life expectancy but it also expands the expected years with a major functional problem. Overall educational attainment levels, however, are very low, indicating that Indonesia’s elderly are at the leading edge of improvements in the nation’s social capacity for health. The life tables suggest that at the early stages of development, longer life is accompanied by an expansion of morbidity.

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Acknowledgment

Partial support for this project was provided by a research grant from NIA (1 R55 AG19311), a population center grant from NICHD (1 R24 HD41025), and training support from the East–West Center.

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Correspondence to Mira M. Hidajat.

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Hidajat, M.M., Hayward, M.D. & Saito, Y. Indonesia’s social capacity for population health: the educational gap in active life expectancy. Popul Res Policy Rev 26, 219–234 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-007-9025-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-007-9025-x

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