We study the steady upward trend of Health Care Expenditures (HCE) over GDP for a sample of OECD countries between 1970 and 2007. While the US is clearly an outlier, almost all of the additional increase in US HCE happened during the 1978-1990 period. We perform two growth accounting exercises...

In 1975, 50 year-old Americans could expect to live slightly longer than their European counterparts. By 2005, American life expectancy at that age has diverged substantially compared to Europe. We find that this growing longevity gap is primarily the symptom of real declines in the health of...