Abstract: With the development of social economy and improvement of people's health condition， life expectancy continues to extend and people are more concerned about the quality of life. Nowadays people's attention has shifted from living longer lives to living healthier lives. Life expectancy can only reflect the length of life， but not the health condition and quality of life. Meanwhile， healthy life expectancy contains death and disability information， which comprehensively reflects the length and quality of life and evaluates the health status of the population comprehensively. Through literature search and review， the article summarized the research on healthy life expectancy in recent years， including the concept proposal， index development， calculation， and application progress of health life expectancy. The research methods of healthy life expectancy are summarized in order to provide academic reference for further research.