Paris : Rich countries have gained more than 10 years in life expectancy on average since 1970, a study released by the OECD said, but the United States ranked near the bottom in the latest ranking for 2013.
Averaged across men and women, the US — at 78.8 years — was 27th in life expectancy at birth among the 34 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the intergovernmental organisation said.
Forty years ago, Americans lived a year longer than the OECD average, but today they have fallen well below the median, it said.
At the same time, the US outstripped other nations in per capita health expenditure, spending two-and-a-half times more than the average within the ODED, which also includes a handful of emerging economies such as Mexico and Turkey.
Life expectancy at birth measures how long someone born today would live if current mortality rates continued to apply.
In reality, improvements in medicine means that age spans are likely to increase over time. Average lifespan across all OECD nations reached 80.5 years in 2013, an increase of more than 10 years since 1970.
