Fewer Canadians are in “very good” or “perfect” health now compared to 10 years ago, a Statistics Canada report showed on Monday.
Functional health is a measure of health that summarizes a person’s level of difficulty in eight health aspects: vision, hearing, speech, cognition, dexterity, mobility, emotional health and pain.
The functional health of Canadian adults overall has declined over the past decade, largely due to deteriorating emotional health and the increasing prevalence of pain, the report said.
The percentage of total Canadian adults with “perfect” or “very good” health dropped from 68.6 per cent in 2015 to 56.4 per cent in 2024, it added.
This is notable, because from 1994 to 2015, functional health among those under 65 was constant and for those over 75 years of age it improved.
However, from 2015 to 2024, functional health remained approximately the same for Canadians age 75 and older but decreased for all younger age groups.
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The sharpest decline came for Canadians aged 18-34.
In 2015, 73.4 per cent of people in this age group had very good to perfect functional health, declining to 60.1 per cent in 2024.
Those aged between 35 and 49 saw a similar decline from 73 per cent in 2015 to 60.4 per cent in 2024.
Women had it worse than men, with all age groups over 18 reporting worse functional health for women than men.
The decline in functional health was seen in all provinces.
Nova Scotia (47.7 per cent) and New Brunswick (48.3 per cent) had the lowest functional health while Quebec (65.6 per cent) had the highest among all of Canada’s provinces.
The sharpest decline of all was in emotional health, measured as the percentage of people who are happy and interested in life. This attribute declined from 78.3 per cent in 2015 to 61.2 per cent in 2024.
Young people were hit hardest by this decline in emotional health. While the figures were fairly similar for all age groups in 2015, in 2024, those aged 18 to 34 had worse emotional health than those aged 50 and older, the report said.
Overall, however, men of all age groups over 18 were consistently less likely to be happy and interested in their lives than women.
In 2015, 77.9 per cent of Canadians said they had no pain or discomfort that they were living with.
In 2024, that figure declined to 72 per cent.
Women and older Canadians were more likely to have pain and discomfort, the report found.
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