- A survey of more than 5,000 people from 10 countries with more than $1 million in assets found that the majority expected to live to be 100
- Only 30 percent of Americans said they expected to live that long
- Nearly 70 percent said they were worried about rising health care costs
- The report by UBS Investor Watch was published Thursday
The majority of the world’s wealthiest people expect to live past 100, according to a new survey.
However, only a third of Americans said they expected to live that long.
A survey of more than 5,000 people from 10 countries with more than $1 million in assets found that respondents in the US were the least optimistic about longevity in part because of the cost of healthcare.
The findings revealed that even America’s richest people are worried about the growing cost of healthcare in the US, which is more expensive than anywhere else in the world.
A survey of the world’s wealthiest people found that half of Americans want to live to be at least 100 but only 30 percent thought they would, compared with 53 percent worldwide
Life expectancies both globally and in the US have been increasing steadily in the last century because of improvements in medicine and sanitation.
The average American has a life expectancy of 79 years old, which is notably less than the global average of 83 years old.
The US is the only country in which wealth has been linked to life expectancy.
A 2017 study from Harvard Medical School found that Americans with deeper pockets live longer than those who are poorer in part because they have more money to spend on healthcare.
The richest one percent were found to live an average of 15 years longer than the poorest one percent.
The UBS Investor Watch report published Thursday found that Americans’ views of longevity differed substantially from the views of people in other countries.
Worldwide, 50 percent of people said they wanted to live to be 100 and 53 percent thought that they actually would.
However, Americans were significantly less optimistic with 30 percent saying they expected to be centenarians.
When asked why they were skeptical of living to be 100, almost all Americans said it was because they were realists and half said that they didn’t think healthcare would be advanced enough.
Nearly 70 percent of American respondents said they were worried about rising healthcare costs, compared with 52 percent worldwide.
Ninety percent of respondents globally said they thought health was more important than wealth compared with 77 percent of Americans.
When it came to handling their wealth, 90 percent of respondents globally said they had made changes to their finances based on the fact that they expected to live longer, while the majority of Americans said they had not.
‘The idea of living to 100 would have seemed absurd up until recently. Now, it’s destined to become commonplace,’ Nick Tucker, Head of UK Domestic at UBS Wealth Management, told Reuters.
More than a third of respondents were worried that living longer would mean they’d have less money to pass on to their family.
Still, more than two thirds said they would take an extra year of life even if it meant leaving behind a smaller inheritance.
Advertisement