What is healthspan?
On this page
Healthspan is the number of years you live in good health, free of the diseases and disability that slow people down. Lifespan is all of your years. Americans have the widest gap between the two of 183 countries, about 12.4 years.
What we’d do
Aim at the healthy years, and the total tends to come with them. The habits that add years in the big US studies also raise the share of those years lived free of disease, so they pay off twice. After 60, put strength and balance at the top of the list, since they decide how long you stay independent.
Why the two numbers get mixed up
Life expectancy is the number in the news, so it’s the one people aim at. But most people, asked what they want, describe something else. They want to stay sharp, walk on their own and keep doing what they enjoy until near the end. That’s healthspan. And the two can pull apart. Across countries, the gap was biggest where chronic disease was common and death rates were low.
The American gap
In 2024, two Mayo Clinic researchers used World Health Organization data on all 183 member countries over two decades. The gap between lifespan and healthy lifespan had grown worldwide to 9.6 years. Women’s gap was 2.4 years wider than men’s. The US had the biggest gap of any country, 12.4 years, driven by a rise in chronic diseases.
The simple version
Picture your life as a ribbon of light, bright for the healthy years and softer toward the end. Lifespan is the length of the ribbon. Healthspan is how much of it is bright, and the goal is to push the soft part as close to the end as you can.
The idea that started it
In 1980, the doctor James Fries pointed out in the New England Journal of Medicine that average life had risen from 47 to 73 over the 20th century, while the longest lives hadn’t got longer. He argued that if healthy habits could push the first serious illness later, illness would get squeezed into a short stretch at the end. He called it the compression of morbidity.
Do the habits really add healthy years?
The Harvard habits study tested this in 2020. It followed 73,196 women and 38,366 men and counted the years after 50 lived free of diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
| At 50 | No healthy habits | 4 or 5 healthy habits |
|---|---|---|
| Women, years free of those diseases | 23.7 | 34.4 |
| Men, years free of those diseases | 23.5 | 31.1 |
Women with four or five habits gained about 11 disease-free years, and men about 8. The share of life lived disease-free rose too, from about 75% to 84% for women and from 75% to 79% for men. Heavy smokers and men and women with obesity had the smallest share.
Our calculator uses those shares to split your remaining years into healthy and less healthy ones, measured from 50.
3 sources
- Garmany A and Terzic A, Global Healthspan-Lifespan Gaps Among 183 World Health Organization Member States, JAMA Network Open, 2024pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Li Y and others, Healthy lifestyle and life expectancy free of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes: prospective cohort study, BMJ, 2020pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Fries JF, Aging, natural death, and the compression of morbidity, New England Journal of Medicine, 1980pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
