Living Longer with Disability: Economic Implications for Healthcare Sustainability

Alessandro Danovi, Stefano Olgiati and Alessandro D’Amico
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Alessandro Danovi: Dipartimento di Scienze Aziendali, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, 24127 Bergamo, Italy
Stefano Olgiati: Department of Morphology, Surgery and Experimental Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ferrara, 44121 Ferrara, Italy
Alessandro D’Amico: Dipartimento di Scienze Aziendali, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, 24127 Bergamo, Italy

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-8

Abstract: This work focuses on the economic implications of the relationship between life expectancy, the number of years lost to disability and per-capita total health expenditure. The primary goal of the paper is to identify and plot the correlation between healthcare expenditure and the global increase in life expectancy, in order to assess if, and how, the way longer average lifespans are achieved affects healthcare sustainability. Datasets regarding the United States, the European Union and the five largest emerging healthcare systems (i.e., Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa) were obtained from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and the WHO Health Expenditure Statistics Repository. All analysis was performed on 2017 data. The results of the analysis showed the number of years lost to disability to be a linear function of life expectancy at birth (male R 2 = 0.61; female R 2 = 0.47), and per-capita total health expenditure to be an exponential function of the number of years lost to disability (male R 2 = 0.60; female R 2 = 0.65). This implies that improving life expectancy via social policies bears negative consequences in terms of healthcare sustainability, unless the number of years lost to disability is reduced too. Further studies should narrow the sample of countries and causes of years lost due to disability, to better inform future policy efforts.

Keywords: socialized healthcare; life expectancy; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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