Health Economics and Social Security Department, Institute of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Jagiellonian University Medical College, 31-066 Krakow, Poland.
Department of Statistics, Institute of Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences, College of Economics, Finance and Law, Cracow University of Economics, 31-510 Krakow, Poland.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jun 21;19(13):7559. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19137559.
In the face of population aging, the health of older people is becoming especially important, impacting various areas of life, societies and countries' economies. To provide the basis for effective decisions to achieve better health, comparative analyses can be used to find best practices to follow. The aim of the research was to check whether drawing conclusions about the older population's health based on the health status of the total population is justified in international comparison analyses. An analysis was conducted for six population health indicators for European countries from 2010-2019. Rankings were created for the total population and the older subpopulation, and then ranks for these two populations were compared using statistical methods. The statistical analyses indicate that there is a strong, statistically significant relationship between the ranks for the total and the older population. However, looking at the descriptive analysis and visual presentation of data, differences in international rankings of indicator values for these two populations can be observed. As older people comprise a specific group of the population that is growing ever bigger and increasingly significant, it would be advisable to present the results of international comparisons not only for the total, but separately for the older population as well.
面对人口老龄化，老年人的健康状况变得尤为重要，影响着生活的各个方面、社会和国家的经济。为了为实现更好健康状况的有效决策提供依据，可以进行比较分析以找到值得借鉴的最佳实践。本研究旨在检验基于总人口健康状况来推断老年人口健康状况的结论在国际比较分析中是否合理。对 2010-2019 年期间六个欧洲国家的六项人口健康指标进行了分析。为总人口和老年人口分别创建了排名，然后使用统计方法比较这两个人口群体的排名。统计分析表明，总人口和老年人口的排名之间存在很强的、具有统计学意义的关系。然而，从描述性分析和数据的直观呈现来看，这两个人口群体的指标值的国际排名存在差异。由于老年人是人口中越来越大且越来越重要的特定群体，因此最好不仅为总人口，而且也为老年人口分别呈现国际比较的结果。
