Years of potential life lost
estimate of the average years a person would have lived if they had not died prematurely
Years of potential life lost (YPLL) or potential years of life lost (PYLL) is an estimate of the average years a person would have lived if they had not died prematurely. It is, therefore, a measure of premature mortality. As an alternative to death rates, it is a method that gives more weight to deaths that occur among younger people. An alternative is to consider the effects of both disability and premature death using disability adjusted life years.
Calculation
To calculate the years of potential life lost, the analyst has to set an upper reference age. The reference age should correspond roughly to the life expectancy of the population under study. In the developed world, this is commonly set at age 75, but it is essentially arbitrary. Thus, PYLL should be written with respect to the reference age used in the calculation: e.g., PYLL[75].
PYLL can be calculated using individual level data or using age grouped data.
Briefly, for the individual method, each person's PYLL is calculated by subtracting the person's age at death from the reference age.
The public source identifies “Years of potential life lost” as estimate of the average years a person would have lived if they had not died prematurely. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Years, potential and life.
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This entry incorporates text from “Years of potential life lost” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.