DALYs do have an age-weighting function that has been rationalized based on the economic productivity of persons at that age, but health-related quality of life measures are used to determine the disability weights, which range from 0 to 1 (no disability to 100% disabled) for all disease.
DALY sta kot prva, skupaj s WHO in Svetovno banko, zasnovala Murray in Lopez v leta 1990 objavljenem delu, ki je znano kot študija globalnega bremena bolezni.