Hearing aids, home grab bars and exercise programmes could unlock more than $6 trillion in global economic value by 2040, a World Economic Forum report released today finds.
The report, “The Longevity Dividend: The Business Case for Linking Health and Wealth,” was developed with Marsh, a professional services and insurance group, and analyses prevention strategies across 21 countries including Nigeria, the only African nation in the study. It identifies three inexpensive interventions capable of preventing hundreds of millions of medical events and delivering $5.8 trillion in healthcare savings alongside $645 billion in productivity gains by 2040.
The most striking return in the report comes from home safety. Fitting homes with basic modifications, including stair lighting, rug tape and grab bars for older adults, could prevent nearly 400 million falls by 2040 and deliver more than $5 trillion in cumulative healthcare savings globally, against an upfront global investment of under $400 billion. Falls can trigger lasting health complications and sustained care needs. Preventing them also shields an estimated $363 billion in lifetime earnings, primarily for women who step back from the workforce to provide care.
Expanding access to hearing aids could prevent 2.4 million dementia cases and generate $325 billion in healthcare savings by 2040. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates around 400 million people worldwide live with hearing loss, yet fewer than 20 percent have access to hearing aids. The Netherlands illustrates the scale of the opportunity: expanding hearing aid access in that country could prevent more than 8,000 dementia cases and save its health system $2 billion. For wealthier countries, the report finds this intervention alone recoups its full cost.
Physical activity programmes endorsed by the WHO and costing between $1 and $40 per person could prevent 8.5 million new type 2 diabetes cases by 2040. These programmes would return more than $125 billion in productivity gains and $85 billion in healthcare savings. In China, diabetes prevention alone could add 16 million healthy years of life for people aged 50 and over.
The report also puts a number on the cost of fragmented policy. Women who spend a single year in a caregiving role lose an estimated 24 percent of their retirement savings, the result of time away from the workforce compounded by the gender pay gap. That finding illustrates what the report describes as the hidden economic consequence of treating health, finance and labour as separate policy domains.
“Longevity is not about getting old,” said Haleh Nazeri, who leads the Longevity Economy initiative at the World Economic Forum (WEF). She argued that capturing the economic potential of an ageing population requires governments, businesses and individuals to treat physical and financial health as a single system rather than separate concerns.
Pat Tomlinson, president and chief executive of Mercer, a Marsh business, said the research shows that when leaders connect health, finance and labour policy around prevention rather than maintaining separate budgets and mandates, they can generate economic growth and lasting value for businesses, governments and the public.
The report calls on governments to align health, finance and labour budgets around prevention and on employers to prioritise physical activity and caregiving support in the workplace. Researchers selected the 21 countries for regional, developmental and age diversity. The report was released at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China, running from June 23 to 25 under the theme “Innovating at Scale.”
