Are International Differences in Health Similar to International Differences in Life-Expectancy?

The question addressed in this chapter is whether people in countries with relatively low life expectancy after age 50 have worse health than those in countries with longer life expectancy. We begin with a short discussion of the theoretical relationships between mortality and population health and the potential complexity of the link between measures of health and mortality. We then examine how indicators of health vary across countries and how closely differences in a set of health indicators correspond to differences in mortality across 10 countries. We note at the outset that most of the data we examine reflect analysis of cross-sectional differences in health; without comparable longitudinal data, there is little we can say about how the differences arose. The countries compared include Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States.