The DALY was first conceptualized by Murray and Lopez in work carried out with the World Health Organization and the World Bank known as the global burden of disease study, which was published in 1990.
==Zgodovina in uporaba==Metodo so razvili leta 1990 na univerzi Harvard za Svetovno banko Svetovna zdravstvena organizacija pa je metodo naknadno sprejela leta 1996 kot del poročila Ad hoc odbora za zdravstvene raziskave "Vlaganje v zdravsteni razvoj in raziskave".