Do Americans Live Longer and Healthier? Forecasting Healthy Life Expectancy by Including Dynamic Evolutions of Mortality, Health, and Macroeconomic Variables

Abstract

We study the evolution in remaining life expectancy and healthy life expectancy of the U.S. population from 1972 to 2020, distinguished by genders. We propose a methodology to forecast life expectancy and healthy life expectancy by incorporating the joint future developments of age-specific mortality and health prevalence rates, GDP, and the unemployment rate. We also quantify the uncertainties of (healthy) life expectancy taking into account the joint evolution of mortality, health, and macroeconomic variables. Finally, we make a comparison with the corresponding models without GDP and the unemployment rate or without taking into account the joint development of mortality and health.