Table 2 Overall characteristics of the 26 included reports

Data source

 Self-reports

19

[1, 2, 21, 24, 34, 36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48, 51]

 Registers

7

[4,5,6, 30, 49, 50, 52]

Gender stratification

 Only men

2

[36, 37]

 Only women

1

[44]

 Gender stratification

20

[1, 2, 4,5,6, 30, 34, 38,39,40,41,42,43, 45,46,47,48,49,50, 52]

 No gender stratification

3

[21, 24, 51]

WLE (definition)

 Economic activity expectancy (employed or unemployed)

8

[1, 2, 36, 37, 41, 43, 44, 52]

 Employment expectancy

13

[4,5,6, 21, 30, 34, 38, 40, 45,46,47,48, 51]

 Productive work expectancy

2

[49, 50]

HWLE (definition)

5

 Years being healthy and employed

3

[21, 39, 51]

 Years employed without disability

1

[24]

 Years being economically active without functional limitations

1

[1]

Working years lost

13

 Retirement

6

[5, 6, 34, 36, 37, 46]

 Disability

6

[5, 6, 36, 37, 47, 50]

 Unemployment

6

[4,5,6, 42, 46, 50]

 Economically inactive/outside of the labour market

10

[4,5,6, 34, 42, 44, 46, 47, 50]

 Involuntary exit (unemployment, disability)

1

[30]

 Voluntary exit (retirement, inactive)

1

[30]

Socioeconomic indicator

 Level of education

21

[1, 2, 6, 21, 24, 30, 34, 36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44, 46,47,48,49, 52]

 Social or occupational class

7

[4, 5, 21, 45, 48,49,50]

Approach for calculation of WLE

 Prevalence-based

5

[1, 2, 5, 46, 48]

 Incidence-based

21

[4, 6, 21, 24, 30, 34, 36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45, 47, 49,50,51,52]

Type of life Table^a

 Period

21

[1, 2, 4,5,6, 21, 30, 34, 38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47, 49,50,51,52]

 Cohort

6

[5, 24, 36, 37, 48, 50]

Interval-censoring^b

 No interval censoring

1

[50]

 Less than one year

4

[6, 30, 42, 49]

 One year or more

16

[4, 21, 24, 34, 36,37,38,39,40,41, 43,44,45, 47, 49,50,51,52]

Censoring by age

 Around retirement age

10

[1, 2, 6, 24, 30, 42, 48,49,50, 52]

 No age censoring

16

[4, 5, 21, 34, 36,37,38,39,40,41, 43,44,45,46,47, 51]