Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union

E2: Environmental statistics and accounts; sustainable development

e-mail contact : ESTAT-SDG-MONITORING@ec.europa.eu. 

The indicator is part of the EU Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicator set. It is used to monitor progress towards SDG 3 on good health and well-being which is embedded in the European Commission’s Priorities under the 'European Green Deal', 'An economy that works for people' and 'Promoting our European way of life'.

SDG 3 aims to ensure health and well-being for all at all ages by improving reproductive, maternal and child health; ending the epidemics of major communicable diseases; reducing non-communicable and mental diseases. SDG 3 also calls for reducing behavioural (drugs and alcohol abuse, tobacco) as well as environmental health risk factors (traffic accidents, chemicals and air, water and soil pollution and contamination). Main prerequisite for meeting these objectives are universal health coverage; access to sexual and reproductive health-care services and to safe, affordable and effective medicines and vaccines for all.

Though each EU Member State is different, they all share the ultimate aim of their health systems to contribute to good health and well-being of their population. The Commission’s role is mainly to support the EU Member States’. Further information can be found in the 2014 Commission Communication: On effective, accessible and resilient health systems.

The indicator is a subjective measure on how people judge their health in general on a scale from "very good" to "very bad". It is expressed as the share of the population aged 16 or over perceiving itself to be in "good" or "very good" health.

The data stem from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU SILC). Indicators of perceived general health have been found to be a good predictor of people’s future health care use and mortality. 

% of population aged 16 or over

Calendar year.

From 2021 Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 foresees the requirements relating to geographical coverage, detailed sample characteristics, including subsampling, in accordance with Annex III, common data gathering periods, common standards for editing and imputation, weighting, estimation and variance estimation.

Before 2021 onwards EU-SILC is based on a common framework defined by harmonised lists of primary and secondary variables, common concepts, a recommended design, common requirements (such as imputation procedures, weighting, sampling errors calculation) and classifications aiming at maximising comparability of the information produced. Details can be found in the metadata of the source datasets (see link to Health variables of EU-SILC (europa.eu)).

ESS (SILC)

Data source: Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (SILC).
Data provider: Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, based on data reported by the countries.

Every year

Indicator is updated annually in February. Complete and updated ESS data release information can be accessed via Eurostat release calendar.

T+1 year

New data points are disseminated within two years after the reference year.

All EU MS

Data are presented for all EU Member States plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, North Macedonia and Serbia.

All EU MS

Data are comparable between all EU Member States respectively other presented countries.

> 10 years

Presented time series (including EU aggregates) starts in 2005.

> 4 data points

Length of comparable time series without methodological break is longer than 4 data points.

Analysis of indicator is presented in Eurostat's annual monitoring report on Sustainable development in the EU (progress towards SDGs in the EU context).

See table  sdg_03_20

Eurostat dedicated section on SDGs: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/sdi/overview

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