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Against a backdrop of rapid population aging, people across 203 of 204 countries analyzed are living longer but spending a rising share of those years coping with chronic illness, according to a study published in The Lancet Public Health.
Researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington found that the global share of life spent in poor health rose to 14.5% in 2023 from 13.6% in 1990.
Over that period, life expectancy at birth climbed from 64.6 years to 73.8 years, while healthy life expectancy moved from 55.9 years to 63.1 years.
Lifespan and healthspan diverge sector-wide Because survival gains consistently outpaced gains in healthy years, the "morbidity gap" (the span of life spent in poor health) widened in almost every country the researchers studied.
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