• Posted July 23, 2026

People Living Longer, But Spending More Years With Illness And Disability

People worldwide are living longer than ever before, but spending many of those extra years battling poor health, a new study says.

The global morbidity gap — the difference between total life expectancy and years of healthy life — widened by nearly two years within a generation, increasing from 8.8 years in 1990 to 10.7 years in 2023, researchers reported July 21 in The Lancet Public Health.

Worse, this bad health was sprinkled across the adult lifespan rather than in the final years of life, suggesting that people are spending more years living with disease and disability, researchers found.

“Our findings suggest that future gains in population health will come not only from helping people live longer, but from helping them live healthier,” said senior researcher Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

“Progress in healthy aging should be measured not only by lifespan, but by healthspan, with greater investment in prevention, long-term disease management and chronic care to reduce years lived in poor health,” Murray said in a news release.

For the study, researchers examined trends in healthy aging from 1990 to 2023, tracking changes in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy.

Overall life expectancy increased from under 65 years to nearly 74 years during that period, the study found.

Healthy life expectancy also rose, but not as quickly — from about 56 years in 1990 to 63 years in 2023.

The United States had the largest national morbidity gap, with 14 years spent in poor health on average, followed by Australia at 13.9 years and Canada at 13.7 years.

But the pattern was consistent globally, with people everywhere experiencing an increase both in longevity and in years spent dealing with illness or disability.

High-income nations had the largest morbidity gap at nearly 13 years on average, while sub-Saharan Africa had the smallest at nine years.

Across all regions, women consistently lived longer than men but also spent more years in poor health. The average morbidity gap for women is about 12 years, compared with just over nine years for men.

“Women are living longer than men almost everywhere in the world, but they are also spending more of those additional years in poor health,” co-researcher Catherine Bisignano, senior scientific writer at IHME, said in a news release.

Low back pain and other musculoskeletal disorders were the main drivers of the morbidity gap, followed by mental disorders like depression and anxiety, researchers said. Other drivers included age-related hearing loss, falls and unintentional injuries, and chronic diseases.

Many years of poor health were linked to preventable or manageable risk factors, including high blood sugar, excess body weight, malnutrition and tobacco use.

“Improving healthy aging will require greater focus on the conditions and risk factors that drive years lived with disability,” Bisignano said. “Addressing these earlier through prevention and better long-term care could have meaningful social, health system and economic impacts.”

More information

Harvard Medical School has lifestyle strategies for living a long, healthy life.

SOURCE: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, news release, July 21, 2026