What is the link between healthcare spending and life expectancy among OECD members?

While the adage "you get what you pay for" might seem to apply to healthcare, the reality is more nuanced. Data from the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reveal a positive correlation between healthcare spending and life expectancy — in most cases, the more a country spends on healthcare per capita, the greater the life expectancy. The relationship is not without exceptions, however. The United States, for example, spends the most on healthcare per capita among OECD members, yet ranks only 30th in life expectancy. The group of countries with lower life expectancies than the United States spent less than one-third of what the United States spent per capita in 2024. On the other end of the spectrum, a group of countries that includes Japan, South Korea, Spain, and Italy spends below the OECD average ($5,967 per capita), yet consistently ranks among the top ten in life expectancy. These outliers suggest that healthcare spending is just one of many factors — among them nutrition, child mortality rates, levels of violence, and access to sanitation — that affect life expectancy. Understanding the full picture requires looking beyond spending figures to the broader social and environmental conditions in which people live.