The economic value of reducing mortality due to noncommunicable diseases and injuries

Abstract

With population aging, national health systems face difficult trade-offs in allocating resources. The World Bank launched the Healthy Longevity Initiative to generate evidence for investing in policies that can improve healthy longevity and human capital. As part of this initiative, we quantified the economic value of reducing avoidable mortality from major noncommunicable diseases and injuries. We estimated avoidable mortality—the difference between lowest-achieved mortality frontiers and projected mortality trajectories—for each cause of death, for 2000, 2019 and 2050, and for geographic regions, with high-income countries, India and China considered separately; we applied economic values to these estimates. The economic value of reducing cardiovascular disease avoidable mortality would be large for both sexes in all regions, reaching 2–8% of annual income in 2019. For cancers, it would be 5–6% of annual income in high-income countries and China, and for injuries, it would be around 5% in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. Despite the large uncertainty surrounding our estimates, we offer economic values for reducing avoidable mortality by cause and metrics comparable to annual incomes, which enable multisectoral priority setting and are relevant for high-level policy discussions around budget and resource allocations. This study reports substantial economic value in annual income if mortality due to cardiovascular diseases, cancers and injuries is reduced.