ON HEALTH INDICATORS AND THEIR MARGIN OF ERROR Available to Purchase

Possible approaches to the formulation of health indicators and the uncertainties that should be associated with such indicators are discussed. As an illustration, two health indicators are formulated, one reflecting the degree of premature mortality in a population, and one reflecting the impact of health on the ratio between the productive and the dependent age groups in a population. Illustrative values of these indicators are computed for various countries and are compared with the corresponding values of the customary health indicators of life expectancy and infant mortality. The indication of the margin of error that should be attached to such indicators if they are to be regarded as measures of population “health” is obtained by observing the extent to which these different indicators correlate with each other when their values for various countries are considered.