Over the past century, Asia has seen one of the most remarkable public health successes in history, with people living longer than ever before. But there’s a catch—while lifespans are increasing, health spans are not keeping pace. Across many countries in the region, people are spending more years living with chronic disease, disability, and declining health. The shift has become not just a healthcare issue, but also an economic one, because when populations live longer in poor health, healthcare systems, workforce participation, and even economic growth all bear the pressure.
While this is a global challenge, nowhere is this shift happening faster or with greater consequence than in Asia.1 However, a different path is possible if proven interventions can be scaled and the focus shifts to designing systems to prevent illness rather than treat it. Research by the McKinsey Health Institute (MHI) has shown that countries across Asia could add meaningful years of healthy life and grow combined GDP by $6 trillion.2
In this episode of the Future of Asia Podcast series, host Debbi Cheong and two McKinsey health experts, Alex Beauvais and Atsushi Sorita, explore why Asia is at the center of this health span transformation and what it would take to turn better health into a driver of economic growth.
An edited version of the conversation follows.
Debbi Cheong: Hello Atsushi and Alex, could you introduce yourselves, please?
Atsushi Sorita: I’m a partner in McKinsey’s Tokyo office. I was a practicing physician before joining McKinsey and specialized in my passion, preventive medicine. For the past few years, I have been leading the MHI chapter in Japan.
Alex Beauvais: I’m a director at MHI and a partner in McKinsey’s London office. I recently coauthored a publication on the health of nations, which examines the topic we’re talking about today. I’m excited to have this discussion and talk about the implications of the move from healthcare to health, and what it means in Asia, in particular.
Debbi Cheong: Atsushi, what is the state of health in Asia today?
Atsushi Sorita: Over the past 100 years, life expectancy in Asia has increased by 40 years, reaching an average of 75 years in 2025. This remarkable improvement reflects progress in healthcare, living conditions, and innovation, which has resulted in significantly reducing early deaths across the population. We see similar trends globally. On average, people live longer now than at any time in the past. However, it does not mean those years are necessarily healthy ones.
Taking a closer look at the past 25 years, we notice that life expectancy in Asia has increased by seven years, from about 68 to 75, but healthy life expectancy has not kept pace. The difference between total life expectancy and healthy life expectancy reflects the number of years lived in poor health. Today, people in Asia spend roughly 9.8 years of their lives in poor health, compared to 8.5 on average in the year 2000.
Naturally, it varies slightly by country, with years spent in poor health in 2025 reaching 11 years in Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, compared with eight years in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. There is also a huge gender gap, with women in Asia in 2025 spending two more years in poor health than men. The challenge is to ensure that the additional years of life being gained are lived in good health.
Debbi Cheong: That begs the question then, Alex, what exactly is driving this widening gap?
Alex Beauvais: The main reason is anchored in two simple, yet unfortunately accelerating trends: an aging population combined with the rise of noncommunicable diseases and chronic conditions. The fact that these two trends are intertwined is speeding up the increasing burden of disease that directly impacts countries in multiple ways. Some countries are already impacted more than others because the proportion of their population that is older is getting larger.
Debbi Cheong: Why is this happening in Asia?
Alex Beauvais: Frankly, it’s happening pretty much everywhere. However, the pace of impact differs depending on where a particular country is in terms of the aging population cycle.
Debbi Cheong: Atsushi, what opportunities exist to reverse these trends?
Atsushi Sorita: At MHI, we looked at what could be done to reverse these trends by using interventions proven to be effective across the population. We estimate that expanding access to these interventions could reduce the total disease burden by about 37 percent by [2050], preventing approximately 22 million premature deaths and [adding a total of] 285 million years lived healthfuly each year.
There are three categories of interventions. The first two are at a population level and at an individual level. We estimate that two-thirds of the [positive] impact would come from these two categories. The third impact involves therapeutic interventions that focus on treating a disease after it develops.
Debbi Cheong: How does this, in turn, impact the economies of these countries?
Atsushi Sorita: Significantly. There are direct, measurable economic benefits, as well as indirect ones. We estimate that improved health could add approximately $6.2 trillion to Asia’s regional GDP annually by 2050—on average, roughly the equivalent of 7 percent of the region’s total GDP. Again, the impact would vary by country but would still be substantial.
The health of nations: Stronger health, stronger economies
Debbi Cheong: Alex, do you want to add anything here?
Alex Beauvais: As Atsushi said, the gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy is widening as more people spend longer in poor health. It would be wrong to assume that people would remain in good health until they are, for example, 70 years old, and then everything falls apart. Years lost due to poor health occur all along the different age categories. Within an active population, roughly 65 percent of years are lost due to poor health. That means the increased gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy impacts the productivity of a nation directly.
The economic effects are on two levels. Doing nothing could mean the active population would lose more years of good health. In turn, this would prevent [economic] growth by hampering the population’s productivity and the degree of employment aspired to by a given country. The other side of the coin would be creating a growth accelerator by directly increasing the number of years the active population spends in good health.
There are other ripple effects, such as if someone is ill, that person needs to be cared for, which typically impacts other family members. Without healthcare interventions, there would be an accelerator effect. Similarly, there’s an accelerator effect if interventions are in place, which is why we’re seeing such a big difference between [countries] doing nothing compared with those applying the type of interventions Atsushi spoke about.
As a result, we estimate a large potential impact in terms of GDP growth in Asia and globally. Globally, it could be $12.5 trillion, roughly double what Atsushi mentioned for Asia, and roughly three times the economy of Japan or twice that of Germany. Clearly, there is a big conversation to be had in Asia in terms of the size of the prize when doing something about this.
Debbi Cheong: You’ve talked about interventions in general. Do you see any countries leading the way that other countries could learn from?
Alex Beauvais: We’re seeing different paces of acceleration among countries, based on different reasons for moving ahead. Some countries are already deep into an aging population, so that becomes a trigger for them to act fast. Countries that already have to spend a lot on healthcare also have a reason to act fast. Other countries with reasonably small populations face growth constraints. Consequently, they need to increase their populations to grow their economies, and the fastest way to do that would be to optimize how healthy the existing population is.
Singapore is well known for being the front runner for a while, integrating the issues of staying healthy and taking care of illness. Its Healthy 365 app is an example. Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health is also pushing fast on population health intelligence with the aim of creating an on-par system for prevention next to the system for taking care of illness.
Put simply, [these countries] have a healthcare system that they’re optimizing in terms of productivity and operations—streamlining the delivery of care on par with prevention. It is almost a prevention infrastructure that comes with a different skill set, different abilities to keep people as healthy as possible, for as long as possible. What they have in common is that they are going after one of the huge advantages of what we’re talking about here: that not being ill, or being less ill in the first place, is the cheapest [approach]. This raises the question of healthcare costs, because of the incredible economic advantage. It doesn’t cost as much to keep somebody in good shape as it does to take care of illness.
Debbi Cheong: Atsushi, do you have anything to add?
Atsushi Sorita: Overall, Asian countries take different approaches. For example, China implemented its Air Control Act back in 2013, which led to a 33 percent reduction of PM 2.5.3 This is an example of how an environmental approach, based on regulation and a concerted effort by the government, can help to reduce the disease burden of the population significantly.
Another example is that India’s approach is based on community and healthcare centers. It began with building about 150,000 health and wellness centers across the country to improve access to primary care and prevention services.
And, obviously, Japan has been known as a healthy country, taking more of a community-based approach on top of strong medical care infrastructure. Japan implemented a regional community care plan that helps to connect preventive services with municipality-based preventive and healthcare services.
Debbi Cheong: Before we round up, do you have any final thoughts?
Atsushi Sorita: I think a lot of stakeholders across Asia still think prevention is a cost and not an investment. But I would say that better health is an investment with a very high ROI. We should change the narrative and move the perception about prevention.
Alex Beauvais: I’ll finish on two thoughts. Building on what Atsushi has said before, I think, especially over the last 12 to 18 months, we’ve seen the emergence of a conversation about prevention and longevity, but mostly about [the impact of] prevention on the economy.
We spoke about the volumes and the numbers preventative healthcare represents. But what we’re seeing is that it’s moving toward a broader conversation about a prevention economy ecosystem. For example, the consumer retail industry is going in that direction as well because of the immense size of the prize. To give you an idea of the magnitude: The global health and wellness industry is expected to be roughly $3 trillion by 2040, about as big as the global auto manufacturing industry is today at $2.8 trillion.
Private capital is moving even faster. For example, between 2024 and 2025, there has been a 55 percent increase in investments aimed at [health and wellness] sales to women. While [today’s topic] affects countries’ economic growth, it also impacts the consumer industry for private capital and ends up having direct ties to all of us.
Ultimately, the size of the prize is roughly nine years of healthy life per individual, which is, for example, the difference between being present at your children’s weddings or not, or when flying, being able to put your luggage in the overhead compartment or not. It’s a huge economic incentive as the evidence shows, but it’s also about how we can improve our lives.
Debbi Cheong: Thank you both for a riveting discussion. For our listeners, if you’d like to find out more about this topic and the Health of nations report, visit mckinsey.com/mhi to find out how your country could use known interventions to help enable population growth and strengthen economies.
Related Articles
The health of nations: Stronger health, stronger economies
