Technical Notes: Years of Life Lost due to Premature Death from Various Causes
Death rates alone give an incomplete picture of the burden that deaths impose on the population. Another measure, which adds a different dimension, is the years of life lost due to premature death. This shows the extent to which life is cut short by a particular cause or disease.
This measure is estimated by linking life table data to each death of a person of a given age and sex. The life table permits a determination of the number of additional years an average person of that age, race, and sex would be expected to live. In this report, the age groups used in the calculation were 1-year intervals. These remaining years of life left are summed over all deaths due to a particular cause, yielding the estimate of the number of person-years of life lost (PYLL). The average years of life lost (AYLL) is obtained by dividing the PYLL by the number of deaths. Both of these measures can be calculated for any cause of death.
