It looks like making sure that people have long, healthy lives is beneficial for the economy, according to two recent studies by a global research team.
“We estimated the economic value of reducing avoidable mortality, defined as the difference between observed (or projected) mortality and lowest achieved (or projected) mortality, by world regions, sex, and age, between 2000 and 2021, with projection to 2050. In 2019, 69% of mortality, or 40 million deaths, was avoidable,” said one of the studies, which was published Sept. 27 in the Nature journal. “The economic value of avoidable mortality globally was 23% of annual income.”
Researchers applied “novel methods” to estimate the economic value of avoidable deaths. These deaths were defined as those that could have been prevented or delayed if all countries had access to the best available healthcare, said Diego S. Cardoso, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He was a co-author of both studies, according to a press release from the university.
The second paper was published in the Nature journal the same day.
It “builds on those findings to quantify the economic value of reducing avoidable mortality from noncommunicable diseases and injuries, highlighting the significant financial benefits of such reductions across different regions and causes of death,” said Cardoso. “It provides a framework for policymakers to prioritize health interventions by comparing the economic impacts of reducing mortality with other sectors.”
Study authors explained that the World Bank has launched the Healthy Longevity Initiative to generate evidence for investing in policies that can improve healthy longevity and human capital. Their work is part of this initiative.
“We estimated avoidable mortality – the difference between lowest-achieved mortality frontiers and projected mortality trajectories – for each cause of death, for 2000, 2019 and 2050, and for geographic regions, with high-income countries, India and China considered separately; we applied economic values to these estimates,” said the paper.
It noted that life expectancy at birth and longevity were regularly progressing in many countries, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In recent years, the proportion of older adults has been increasing as a result of fertility declines and progresses in longevity.
“Such rapid transitions can be accompanied by either the expansion or compression of morbidity,” said the study. “This imposes new and substantial challenges to health systems, necessitating advanced technologies, the implementation of innovative delivery platforms and the strengthening of financial architectures.”
Study findings indicate that controlling noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and stroke, as well as injuries could have significant economic implications. If nothing is done, researchers believe the cost could be “enormous.”
In the U.S., the aging population has shifted demographics and continued to an increased reliance on Social Security and other government assistance, Audacy reported this week. Last month. Audacy has also reported on how the U.S. spends more on healthcare than other similar countries but has poorer health outcomes than those same countries.
“The economic implications of controlling [noncommunicable diseases] and injuries would be substantial, particularly for [cardiovascular diseases], cancers and injuries,” the study authors said. “This prompts the urgent rolling out and scaling up of largely underused cost-effective preventive, curative and public health interventions in all countries. More broadly, our framework could also be adapted to estimate the economic returns from investing in health.”