Americans Spend More Than 12 Years of Their Lives 'Burdened by Disease' — Highest of Any Country
The U.S. struggles more than 182 other countries when it comes to the healthspan of its population
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Stock image of a patient in a hospital bed.Americans spend on average more than a dozen years per person suffering from disease — and have a greater “disease burden” than all other countries in the World Health Organization, a new study finds.
The research surveyed the health outcomes of 183 WHO member nations, and found that “the U.S. stood out with the largest healthspan-lifespan gap and greatest noncommunicable disease burden,” according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Healthspan-lifespan, in these terms, means how long someone is living without illness or disease. And while people are living longer, the study found, those are not healthy years.
Globally, most people struggle for 9.6 years with disease; However “the U.S. presented the largest healthspan-lifespan gap, amounting to 12.4 years, underpinned by a rise in noncommunicable diseases.”
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Australia and New Zealand were close behind in healthspan-lifespan gaps with 12.1 years and 11.8 years, respectively.
The study also found that women “globally exhibited a larger healthspan-lifespan gap than men” — up to 2.4 years globally, and 2.6 years in the US — which the study attributed to “a much higher per capita women musculoskeletal burden in line with a higher musculoskeletal disease burden globally in women.”
Examples of musculoskeletal disease, as defined by WHO, include arthritis, tendonitis and osteoporosis.
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“Worldwide, the healthspan-lifespan gap is a growing threat to healthy longevity,” the study’s senior author, Andre Terzic, a professor of cardiovascular research at the Mayo Clinic, told The Washington Post.
In the U.S., life expectancy increased from 79.2 to 80.7 years in women, and from 74.1 to 76.3 years in men; The study found a global life expectancy of 72.5 years — but only 63.3 of those years were healthy ones.
The study attributed “mental and substance use disorders, along with musculoskeletal diseases” to the disparity in the U.S. “These results underscore that around the world, while people live longer,” researchers wrote, “they live a greater number of years burdened by disease.”
These findings dovetail with earlier research on rising cancer rates, which estimated that a record-breaking two million people would receive a cancer diagnosis in 2024 — driven largely by a rise in colorectal cancer rates.
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