OBJECTIVEFocus on the Active Life Expectancy (ALE) of elderly in Beijing and the transition in recent years.

METHODSA representative sample of 3257 elderly people who lived in the urban, suburban and rural communities in Beijing that had been followed up for 12 years. Their health and survival status had been surveyed every 2-3 years. Activity Daily Living scale (ADL), recommended by WHO was used to evaluate the physical function capability of the elderly. IMaCH 0.8 was used to estimate life expectancy (LE) and active life expectancy (ALE) for both periods while age, sex and rural/urban residence areas were adjusted.

RESULTSLongitudinally, data showed that the main characters remained unchange throughout the two periods including 1) LE, ALE, ALE/LE of elderly living in urban area were higher than those living in rural area; 2) LE seemed longer in women than men, but ALE/LE was less in women. The transition between two period showed that 1) LE increased modestly in all groups but less prominent in urban residents and in females; 2) ALE was not significantly changed in the rural elderly but declined markedly in women living in the urban area; 3) ALE/LE of the elderly declined in all groups, especially in urban and oldest old groups.

CONCLUSIONIn Beijing, elderly AL-E did not increase in parallel with the increase of LE while ALE/LE of the elderly declined significantly in recent years. In order to improve quality of life of the elderly and to increase their ALE, emphasis should be given to prevention of cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and other chronic diseases while reducing the occurrence of physical disability and strengthening on rehabilitation would be the basic health care measures.

Activities of Daily Living ; Aged ; China ; Female ; Health Surveys ; Humans ; Life Expectancy ; trends ; Longitudinal Studies ; Male ; Rural Health ; trends ; Sex Factors ; Urban Health ; trends

Objective To explore the experience of stroke influencing the lire expectancy(LE),active life expectancy(ALE),inactive life expectancy(IALE),and the trend of 1ife expectancy among older adults,from 1990s to 2000s in Beijing,China.Methods A representative sample of 3257 elderly people living in urban or rural communities in Beijing were followed up from 1990 until 2004.Their health and survival status had been surveyed every 3-5 years.Activity Daily Living(ADL)scale,recommended bv WHO was used to evaluate the physical function capability of the elderly.SAS was used to estimate LE,ALE and IALE for both periods of 1992-1997 and 2000-2004 by age and by areas of residency(rural or urban).Results LE and ALE were shorter.and IALE was longer,among the elderly with stroke than those without stroke at all age groups.Functional Status at baseline was also a very important factor in determining ALE and IALE.For those active at baseline,ALE in the elderly with stroke was shorter than those without.There were no difiererlces found in IALE between those with or without stroke.but ALE was longer than LALE.For the elderly with stroke and inactive at baseline.their IALE were longer than ALE and their ALE were at low levels in all age groups.Among those with stroke and living in urban,their LE and ALE were longer than those living in the rural area.When comparing with the period of 1992-1997.botll LE and ALE increased during the period of 2000-2004 in all the elderly groups,both in urban and rural areas.The largest increment occurred among those with stroke who originated in an inactive state.Conclusion Stroke reduced both quality and quantity of life of the elderly.The reductions of LE and ALE were greater among the elderly with stroke in rural than in urban areas.Both LE and ALE increased from 1992-1997 to 2000-2004 among the elderly with stroke in both urban and rural areas.