Public Health · 3 h ago
EU-27 health, productivity and competitiveness profiles cluster into four groups
An exploratory cross-country analysis grouped the 27 EU member states using six health, labour, digitalisation and competitiveness indicators. Four clusters captured 70.7% of the variation, but the smallest group was less stable and sensitive to the productivity reference year.
- Four clusters accounted for 70.7% of total variance.
- North-Western Europe had favourable profiles and highest reported sickness absence.
- Central and Eastern Europe had weakest health profiles and fastest productivity growth.
- The three-country South-Eastern cluster was least stable.
Researchers compiled six country-level indicators for the EU-27 from WHO, Eurostat, European Commission and World Economic Forum data, using each indicator’s most recent comparable year from 2019–2022. The measures included healthy life expectancy, reported physical activity and sickness absence, cumulative labour productivity growth from 2015 to 2020, digitalisation and competitiveness. The team used standardised variables and k-means clustering, testing alternative cluster numbers and assessing stability with several methods.
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BMC Public Health: Population health, labour productivity dynamics and competitiveness in the EU-27: an exploratory cross-country cluster analysis ↗This is an automated AI-condensed summary that has not yet been reviewed by an editor. Always consult the full item at the original source.