WEALTH

MICRO
A MIXED
BLESSING
With increasing life expectancy,
longer periods of poor health are
becoming a costly risk in old age
One of the greatest achievements in
human history is increasing life
expectancy. With every passing day,
we gain roughly six hours of life, making time
one of the few resources that grow as we spend it.
But like everything else in life, longer lives
come with a price tag. Despite scientists’
efforts to boost healthy aging, healthcare costs
seem set to rise. “Most of the progress now
being made is in reducing death rates, but the
prevalence of diseases associated with old age
is not going down,” Christopher Murray,
director of the Institute for Health Metrics and
Evaluation at the University of Washington,
told PROJECT M.
A physician and health economist by
training, Murray is uniquely positioned to
assess the world’s state of health. He cofounded
the Global Burden of Disease (GBD)
approach, an international scientific project
which, since 1990, has generated more than 10
billion data points from 188 countries to
capture death and disability from more than
300 diseases and injuries.
“Mental health, musculoskeletal and
neurological disorders account for the lion’s
share of disability,” he says. “Their prevalence
is stagnating at best and increasing in some
countries. Consequently, the lifetime cost, the
total health spending for someone who is
insured, will undoubtedly go up.” Where
dramatic improvements in global health are
occurring, they are primarily due to a decrease
in infectious diseases as a cause of death.
FOUR STEPS FORWARD, ONE BACK
Murray sees aging as a blessing with
drawbacks. “Aging is great news,” he says, but
what concerns him is that there is no
indication of compression of morbidity, the
idea that sick years could become condensed
into a short period at the end of longer lives.
“The fact that more people are living into
their 80s and 90s, an age where most have five
or 10 different health conditions, has
significant ramifications for individuals in
terms of their quality of life and in terms of
healthcare cost,” he concludes.
Take Japan, where life expectancy for men
has increased four years since 1990, according
to the GBD study. But only three of them will be
spent in good health; one quarter of the time
gained is spent in poor health.
Healthcare costs for those years spent in
poor health arrive on top of the need to
increase private retirement savings. “An
42 • Allianz