Longevity Dividend for Israel from enhancing research, development and education for healthy longevity and prevention of aging-related diseases
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Open in new tab The “Longevity Dividend” concept, primarily developed by Prof. Jay Olshansky of the University of Chicago and Prof. Dana Goldman’s group at the University of Southern California, argues for the need to enhance biomedical research of aging. Principally, the Longevity Dividend concept argues that the therapeutic technologies that would be developed by biomedical research of aging should enable us to directly intervene into the aging process and thus prevent multiple aging-related diseases and thus extend healthy longevity. This argument is based on the fact that aging is the main risk factor or underlying cause of all chronic non-communicable aging-related diseases and a critical risk factor for communicable infectious diseases. Hence a therapeutic intervention into aging should be able to make a massive improvement in population health by preventing multiple aging-associated diseases and disabilities that have aging as their common determining factor. This increase in the healthy longevity of the population, according to the Longevity Dividend concept, would create massive economic benefits, including benefits for the welfare and healthcare system, saving expenses in these systems by extending the healthy and productive period of life. These savings would subsequently free additional resources for further economic development. Hence, according to the Longevity Dividend concept, there is an urgent need to prioritize the support of biomedical research of aging that would be able to provide such therapeutic and preventive means (Olshansky, 2019; Goldman et al., 2013; Stambler, 2025). These are the main premises of Longevity Medicine and Geroscience, represented by the NIH Geroscience Interest Group, combining the US National Institute on Aging (NIA) and researchers on aging of all the NIH institutes.
The model for the economic benefits or longevity dividend thanks to preventing aging-related ill health is presented in the seminal paper by Jay Olshansky and Dana Goldman’s groups “Substantial health and economic returns from delayed aging may warrant a new focus for medical research”, Health Affairs, 32 (10), 1698–1705, 2013. In that foundational 2013 Health Affairs paper, Dana Goldman and his co-authors estimated the value of delayed aging (corresponding to a year of increasing healthy life expectancy) at $7.1 trillion (discounted present value in $2010) for the US population over age 50 from 2010-2060 (i.e. over the period of 50 years). This value can be distributed over the 6.88 billion life years lived 2010-2060, which gives a crude average benefit of $1032 per life-year lived.
At the request of Vetek Association – the Movement for Longevity and Quality of Life, Israel, Dana Goldman’s group performed an approximate calculation of Longevity Dividend for Israel, based on the same assumptions (personal communication to Dr. Ilia Stambler, Dec 2019). According to this calculation, assuming that this benefit holds for Israel and doing a rough estimate of the Israeli population 50 and older over the same time span would give a total benefit of around $75 billion, over the period of 50 years, or $1.5 billion per year (~5.5 billion NIS per year) economic benefit for Israel (Table 1) from a year increase in healthy life expectancy.
It should be emphasized that this method provides a rough estimate of the order of magnitude. With additional research, it may be possible to refine the calculation and provide a more precise estimate of the economic benefit for Israel that would results from preventing aging-related ill health via enhancing research, development and education for healthy longevity and prevention of multiple aging-related diseases. This research can be performed by establishing an advisory body and relevant calls for research proposals.
Table 1
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References
Goldman DP, Cutler D, Rowe JW, Michaud PC, Sullivan J, Peneva D, Olshansky SJ (2013) Substantial health and economic returns from delayed aging may warrant a new focus for medical research, Health Affairs, 32 (10), 1698–1705.
Olshansky SJ (2019) Longevity Dividend, in Dupre M, Gu D (Eds.), Stambler I (Sect. Ed.), Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging, Cham: Springer.
Stambler I (2025), The politics of the Longevity Dividend. How much is healthy longevity worth us? in Umbrello S, Hughes J, Cali C (Eds.) The Biopolitics of Human Enhancement, Berlin: De Gruyter
