Health Dynamics and Ageing Population

The last century witnessed the starting point of a process of population ageing which represents one of the most important demographic events of last decades in Europe, and Luxembourg is not an exemption. This ongoing process will have a fundamental impact on the economy and the organization of the society, and in the setting of political goals. However, the strength of these impacts will depend on the evolutions of the health status of the population since it affects, among other, the labor productivity, the saving capacity and hence, the labour force participation. In fact, it is well known that there exist a link between aging and health as most diseases are age-related. The HEADYNAP project aims at modeling, measuring and predicting the health status of Luxembourg's population which is steadily growing old. Two research lines are developed in the HEADYNAP project. First, the project will assess the overall health status of the Luxembourgish population using a multidimensional health index. Second, we will use microsimulation technique for forecasting the individuals' health status by updating the synthetic indicators of overall health of each individual for each time interval in order to provide a precise picture on how overall health will evolve over time. The outcomes of this project will contribute to the early design of public policies aimed at coping with the consequences of the ageing of society since it attempts to anticipate the impacts, channeled through the health status of the population, on the health care services, infrastructures and public finance.