\n<\/p>\n
Singaporeans are living longer than ever, but that does not necessarily mean more years spent in good health, experts said.<\/p>\n
Life expectancy for Singapore residents rose to 83.9 years in 2025, from 83.7 years the year before, according to the Department of Statistics.<\/p>\n
Women continue to live longer than men, with an average life expectancy of 86 years, compared with 81.8 years for men.<\/p>\n
But as people live longer, health problems can accumulate \u2013 shifting the focus to healthspan, or the number of years spent in good health.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Health estimates that Singaporeans spend about 75 years in good health.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to a recent study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and the National University of Singapore\u2019s (NUS) Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, the gap between lifespan and healthspan has widened by more than two years from 1990 to 2023. Women also spent more years in poor health than men.<\/p>\n
This means many Singaporeans could spend close to a decade of their lives dealing with ill health, frailty or disability.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Part of the reason is that potentially fatal health problems are being detected and treated earlier.<\/p>\n
Better management of chronic diseases and a more integrated healthcare system have helped tackle conditions such as cancer and heart disease, while advances in medicine and technology have improved early disease detection.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But while these developments are helping people live longer, non-fatal health problems can be harder to address.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Physical and mental health conditions can accumulate over adulthood, leading to prolonged pain, disability and a poorer quality of life.<\/p>\n
The challenge, then, is to prevent or delay these problems so that gains in lifespan are matched by gains in healthspan.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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HOW LONG DO WE STAY HEALTHY?\u00a0 Singaporeans are living longer than ever, but that does not necessarily mean more years spent in good health, experts…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--4GGNDDDv--\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/singapore-s-population-is-ageing-rapidly.png?itok=op6npn7L","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[468,7758,17578,2007,1452,9895,2482,418],"class_list":["post-76189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-close","tag-gap","tag-healthier","tag-living","tag-longer","tag-necessarily","tag-science","tag-singaporeans","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/76190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}