The central questionWe Have Extended Life. Have We Improved Health?
A policy-oriented view of how health systems can move beyond extending life toward protecting healthy years through prevention, immunization, early detection, proactive delivery and stronger systems.
The central question
Are countries converting longer lives into more years lived in full health, and where can upstream action close the gap?
From reactive care to preemptive, proactive health.
GC21CH frames healthy longevity as a system outcome shaped by prevention, access, early action, social conditions and health-system capability.
Global overview
The outcome is not only how long people live, but how well they live.
This dashboard combines country-level health indicators with immunization profiles, healthy-longevity measures and a separate global disease-burden benchmark. Reference years and data scope are retained so comparisons are interpreted responsibly.
GC21CH · Executive Baseline
From Longer Lives to Healthier Lives
A global baseline for understanding where health systems stand today, and what must change to extend healthy years, not only years lived.
We Have Extended Life. Have We Improved Health?
The central finding
Longevity is outrunning healthy longevity
GC21CH · Complete Data Atlas
Every baseline value, made visible
The summary establishes the story. This atlas exposes the underlying values across population, income, longevity, healthy longevity, insurance, NCD burden and health financing, so every conclusion can be inspected rather than inferred.
Population by income group
GDP per capita
Income group
Population (m)
Share of world
GDP per capita (US$)
Population aged 65+
Life expectancy and HALE
Years lived in ill health
Income group
LE 2021
LE 2023
HALE 2021
Ill-health gap
HALE / LE
Insurance premium density
Health spending per capita
Interpretation: Insurance premium density and health spending are shown together because coverage alone does not reveal financial protection. The large gradient between income groups is a system-design constraint, not merely a consumer-market difference.
Income group
Insurance premium / capita (US$)
Health spending / capita (US$)
Premature NCD risk, age 30–70 (%)
Global NCD deaths by cause
Global NCD burden markers
43mNCD deaths annually
75%of non-pandemic deaths
~66%of global DALYs
82%of premature NCD deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries
NCD cause
Deaths (millions)
Share of NCD deaths
Longevity and healthy ageing
Are healthy years keeping pace with longer lives?
Longevity at age 60 describes expected remaining life. HALE at age 60 describes expected remaining years in full health. Their difference is the healthy-life gap, a mathematical indicator of years not expected to be lived in full health.
Global unweighted trajectory
Unweighted average across available country-year observations in the supplied 2016–2024 series.
Healthy-life gap by country
Top 12 countries by healthy-life gap, using the latest available row in the supplied longevity series.
Immunization coverage
Immunization is an upstream protection layer.
Select a country to examine the mean of all available reported vaccine indicators, the separate core index, every reported vaccine value and the three lowest reported coverages.
Reported vaccine coverage profile
Three lowest reported vaccine coverages
Global immunization comparison
Core immunization coverage map
Map uses the core index: average of BCG, DTP3 and MCV1. Countries without all three values are shown as unavailable.
Where is reported coverage strongest, and where are the gaps?
Rankings use the mean of all available vaccine indicators for each country, or a selected vaccine when the vaccine selector is used. Countries with missing values for a selected indicator are excluded from that ranking.
Immunization and healthy longevity
How does healthy longevity vary across immunization coverage levels?
This line chart groups countries into core immunization coverage bands and shows the average HALE at birth within each band. This makes the overall pattern easier to interpret than a country-level scatter plot while preserving the distinction between association and causation.
Average HALE at birth by immunization coverage band
Each point represents the mean HALE at birth for countries within the indicated core immunization coverage band.
Correlation summary
Countries with higher reported immunization coverage tend to have higher HALE in this dataset. This is an association and does not establish that immunization alone causes higher HALE. The relationship may also reflect healthcare access, income, nutrition, education, disease burden and health-system quality.
Global Burden of Disease benchmark
What does the global burden of disease look like across time, age and cause?
Data scope: Global only. The supplied GBD export contains global estimates by year, age, cause, measure and metric.
Global disease burden over time
Global disease burden by age group
Global NCD burden by age and health outcome
Global burden by cause
Definitions
Deaths=number of deaths
DALYs=healthy life-years lost to illness, disability or premature death
YLDs=years lived with disability
YLLs=years of life lost due to premature death
Number and percentage are different metrics and should not be mixed on one axis.
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Healthcare expenditure, population ageing, and the healthy longevity gap.
The Central Challenge
Healthy Longevity Gap
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Years lived in less than full health
Life expectancy measures how long people live. HALE estimates how many of those years are lived in good health.
Visualization: Paired bars compare life expectancy at birth against HALE. The space between them is the healthy longevity gap.
The Ageing Context
More people are reaching older ages
Visualization: Area chart of the share of population aged 65+ over time.
Ageing requires systems to optimise for prevention, functional ability, and long-term support, rather than just acute care.
Healthcare Resources
How much are health systems spending?
Total Exp. (PPP)
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Per capita
Exp. % of GDP
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Total GDP share
Govt. Share
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% of total exp.
Out-of-Pocket
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% of total exp.
Current Health Expenditure Trend (PPP)
Visualization: Historical CHE per capita in PPP dollars for cross-regional comparison.
Age-Specific Model
What does ageing mean for expenditure per person?
Visualization: Estimated per-capita spending for adults 65+ vs under 65, based on the selected scenario.
Exploratory Relationship
Does higher expenditure correspond with healthier years?
Visualization: CHE per capita vs HALE; bubble size is % aged 65+. Association does not imply causation.
Older-age expenditure
Estimated health expenditure per person aged 65+
Visualization: Modelled International $ PPP per person aged 65+, 2025, by World Bank income group.
Spending concentration
Estimated share of total spending attributable to 65+
Visualization: Share of total current health expenditure attributed to people aged 65+ under the model.
Model
E<65=E(p × r) + (1 − p)
E65+=r × E<65
E
average health expenditure per person
p
share of the population aged 65+
r
age-expenditure ratio (65+ relative to under 65)
These values are estimates, not directly reported age-specific accounts.
From reactive care to anticipatory health
Preemptive care is the operating principle for healthy longevity.
Healthy longevity requires health systems to identify risks earlier, intervene before avoidable deterioration and help people preserve functional ability across the life course.
This strategic framework complements the dashboard’s quantitative evidence. It is not presented as an additional country-level dataset indicator.
GC21CH strategic framework
Move from treating illness after it appears to protecting health before decline becomes harder to reverse.
Preemptive Care establishes the principle: anticipate risk, act early and preserve healthy years. Proactive Delivery is the mechanism through which health systems turn that principle into timely, coordinated action.
The goal
♥
Healthy Longevity
More years lived in good health, with functional ability, independence and well-being.
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Operating principle
⌁
Preemptive Care
Identify risks and early decline, then prevent, detect or manage problems before they become avoidable harm.
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Delivery model
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Proactive Delivery
Reach people with screening, follow-up, monitoring, referrals and support before crisis care is required.
Enabling capabilities
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Genomic and Risk-Informed Prevention
Use clinically appropriate genetic, genomic and risk information to support earlier surveillance and more targeted prevention, with consent, counselling, privacy and equity safeguards.
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AI-Enabled Health Intelligence
Use AI for early risk identification, clinical decision support, population-health surveillance and care prioritisation, supported by human oversight, transparency and bias monitoring.
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Integrated Data, Diagnostics and Digital Infrastructure
Connect timely diagnostics, interoperable records, remote monitoring and coordinated pathways so that early insight can lead to effective action.
Sources and methodology
Transparent by design.
The dashboard distinguishes reported values from derived measures, preserves missingness, and displays the relevant reference year and scope wherever possible.
Immunization
Source layer: WHO/UNICEF WUENIC 2025 revision as supplied. Overall coverage is the mean of all available vaccine percentages. Core index is the mean of BCG, DTP3 and MCV1.
Healthy longevity
HALE at birth is from the supplied WHO 2021 layer. The age-60 series uses the supplied 2016–2024 local GC21CH series and retains its source note and estimation status.
GBD
Source layer: IHME GBD 2023 export. Scope is global only, with years 2003–2023 and measures including deaths, DALYs, YLDs and YLLs.
Data Sources & Scenario Definitions
Official data sources
The observed metrics presented in this dashboard are compiled from gold-standard international datasets:
Expenditure Data: Sourced from the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Health Expenditure Database (GHED).
Demographics: Sourced from the UN World Population Prospects and World Bank DataBank.
Life Expectancy & HALE: Sourced from WHO Global Health Observatory data.
What is a “Scenario”?
Because national datasets rarely separate spending by exact age groups, older-age expenditure must be estimated. The Scenario dropdown allows you to change the underlying mathematical assumption (the age-expenditure ratio) used in the model:
Base Scenario: Uses empirically derived ratios (e.g., assuming 65+ individuals consume ~3.4× more resources in high-income nations, and ~1.35× in lower-income nations).
Low Scenario: Assumes a flatter spending curve, meaning healthcare consumption is more evenly distributed across all ages.
High Scenario: Assumes a steeper spending curve, meaning healthcare consumption is intensely concentrated in the 65+ demographic.
Sources
Official source collections used to compile the dashboard datasets. Each link opens the originating database or publication page.
Data area
Source
Access
Health expenditure & financial protection
World Health Organization (WHO), Global Health Expenditure Database (GHED)
