‘The plot twist’: A study of 73,000 adults found America’s richest still die sooner than most Europeans

Résumé détaillé

U.S. life expectancy hit a record 79 years in 2024, yet a Brown University study finds Americans in every wealth bracket die sooner than their European peers.

Americans have never earned more or lived longer. Median household income hit $87,460 in 2025, the highest since the Census Bureau began tracking it in 1967, according to Census data released in September. Life expectancy reached 79 years in 2024, also a record.

Yet money still can’t buy Americans a European lifespan. A Brown University study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine found that Americans die sooner than Europeans at every level of wealth, and that the richest Americans fare no better than the poorest people in much of Western Europe.

“The plot twist is that even the wealthiest quartile of Americans does not have better outcomes than most of northern and Western Europeans,” says Sara Machado, a research scientist at Brown’s Center for Health System Sustainability. “That was unexpected and counters a lot of the narrative that we’re used to.”

The researchers tracked more than 73,000 adults ages 50 to 85 in the U.S. and 16 European countries, starting in 2010 and following them for about a decade, using data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study and Europe’s SHARE survey.

The wealthiest people in northern and western Europe had a mortality rate about 35% lower than the wealthiest Americans. Survival among America’s richest quartile was statistically equivalent to that of the poorest quartile in countries like France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Across the board, people in continental Europe died at rates about 40% lower than Americans over the study period, according to Brown. In southern Europe, death rates were about 30% lower.

Wealth still matters within each country. “We found that where you stand in your country’s wealth distribution matters for your longevity, and where you stand in your country compared to where others stand in theirs matters, too,” Machado says.

The U.S. spent an estimated $14,775 per person on health care in 2024, nearly $7,000 more than the average comparable wealthy country, according to the Peterson-KFF…

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