41 economies combine less output with longer lives
A repeated pattern, rather than a single country anecdote.
Published 2 November 2026 · Observation period: 2023, checked 2015–2024 · 2026-11-02-r3
In our fixed 2023 atlas, 41 of 197 covered economies have both lower GDP per person and higher life expectancy than the United States. This is a strict two-variable comparison: less measured output and more expected years of life under the mortality rates of that year.
Costa Rica offers one illustration. Its GDP per person is 35.5% of the US figure, while its life expectancy is 2.4 years higher. This does not make Costa Rica richer in every sense. GDP measures output; life expectancy measures a specific mortality outcome. Their disagreement is the finding.
All 197 complete 2023 pairs. Labels identify illustrative economies, not a selected regression sample. The chart is descriptive; GDP has a logarithmic axis. Download SVG
Look beyond the illustrative pair
We also repeated the lower-output/longer-life comparison for each year from 2015 to 2024, using that year for both indicators. The count ranges from 33 to 47 economies. Costa Rica’s life-expectancy advantage is positive in all ten captured years, including before the pandemic. This weakens the explanation that the contrast is solely a one-year pandemic artefact; it does not eliminate other explanations or source revisions.
A custom benchmark: Longevity Lift
Instead of making the US the benchmark for every place, Longevity Lift compares a country with the median of its GDP-near peers. In 2023, Costa Rica is 4.7 years above its 23-economy peer median; the US is 4.1 years below its 19-economy peer median. Both signs persist with the narrower and wider peer bands we tested.
This is a way to find questions worth studying, not a measure of healthcare efficiency. History, unequal resources, violence, population composition, public health and measurement all require separate investigation.
How we calculated this
GDP: NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD, constant-2021 international dollars. Life expectancy: SP.DYN.LE00.IN, period life expectancy at birth. Strictly lower GDP and strictly higher life expectancy than the same-year US observation; no imputation. Count includes coverage-filtered economies and territories and weights each equally. The primary comparison is 2023 for consistency with our index; 2024 is a separate check with 195 complete pairs. Longevity Lift uses a leave-one-out GDP factor of 1.25, at least five peers, with 1.20 and 1.35 sensitivity checks. No statistical intervals or causal interpretation.
These analyses were selected after exploring the available data. They are descriptive findings, not preregistered hypothesis tests. Future source revisions or a different comparison set can change the numbers.
Citation: Pluraterra. “41 economies combine less output with longer lives.” 2 November 2026. Analysis v1, source release 2026-11-02-r3. This analysis is derived by Pluraterra; underlying source attribution and reuse conditions remain applicable.