TY - JOUR AU - Michaud,Pierre-Carl AU - Goldman,Dana AU - Lakdawalla,Darius AU - Gailey,Adam AU - Zheng,Yuhui TI - International Differences in Longevity and Health and their Economic Consequences JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 15235 PY - 2009 Y2 - August 2009 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15235 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15235.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Pierre-Carl Michaud RAND Corporation 1776 Main Street Santa Monica, CA 90401 E-Mail: michaud@rand.org Dana Goldman Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics University of Southern California 3335 S. Figueroa St, Unit A Los Angeles, CA 90089-7273 Tel: (213) 821-7948 Fax: (213) 740-3460 E-Mail: dana.goldman@usc.edu Darius N. Lakdawalla Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics University of Southern California 3335 S. Figueroa St, Unit A Los Angeles, CA 90089-7273 Los Angeles, CA 90 Tel: 213/740-6012 E-Mail: dlakdawa@healthpolicy.usc.edu Adam Gailey The RAND Corporation 1776 Main Street P.O. Box 2138 Santa Monica, CA 90401 E-Mail: agailey@rand.org Yuhui Zheng RAND Corporation E-Mail: yuzheng@hsph.harvard.edu AB - In 1975, 50 year-old Americans could expect to live slightly longer than their European counterparts. By 2005, American life expectancy at that age has diverged substantially compared to Europe. We find that this growing longevity gap is primarily the symptom of real declines in the health of near-elderly Americans, relative to their European peers. In particular, we use a microsimulation approach to project what US longevity would look like, if US health trends approximated those in Europe. We find that differences in health can explain most of the growing gap in remaining life expectancy. In addition, we quantify the public finance consequences of this deterioration in health. The model predicts that gradually moving American cohorts to the health status enjoyed by Europeans could save up to $1.1 trillion in discounted total health expenditures from 2004 to 2050. ER -