This is great work, but the present tense is a bit misleading. A big caveat here is that there's a huge delay due to normal human lifespans & the fact that this work considered those billionaires that have already died. That means we're talking here about people for whom most of their decades were lived when medical knowledge & technology was 3-5 decades older than it is today.
Karl, thanks a lot for reading and the kind words.
Yes, I agree there are limitations and I did cut some corners. The nature of this work is less about precision and more about telling a story. Data availability is very poor, especially on billionaires. They're mostly studied as n=1 and very rarely in the context of health.
Your point about the time lag is valid. These are people who lived most of their decades with 30-50 year older medicine. Whether today's billionaires will do better is an open question. My bet: marginally, until we actually solve aging.
You compare to Hong Kong lifespan TODAY, but if these people died 2015-2025 at mean age 83, they would have been born in late 1930s right? And at the time, median lifespan was like 60. So counter to what I too originally concluded, it seems like ultra-rich could in that period buy 30% longer lives. Now probably a lot of that is avoiding infectious and war deaths.
I spent most of the two months on this research exploring exactly this problem (finding valid comparators). The comparators I ended up with are not ideal - think of them as the least bad options that I was able to find.
Life expectancy at birth in the 1930s-40s was ~60 primarily due to high infant/child mortality, not because adults died at 60. A man born in 1940 who survived to age 50 already had a conditional LE of 72-75. So the "30% longer" framing compares the wrong numbers.
That's why in the study I use two approaches that avoid this trap:
1) Person-years with age-stratified SMR - comparing billionaires aged 50+ to Hong Kong males aged 50+ using mortality rates from the same time period (2015-2023). This sort of levels the playing field.
2) Conditional LE at 50 (remember median age of becoming a billionaire is 58). It has to be applied with caution, because of differences in population structure.
You could also argue several potential future billionaires died at age 5 from polio - they never got the chance to make the Forbes list. That's survivorship bias baked into the dataset.
For more details you can look in the Can Money Buy years section, in Methodology Note and in the Methodology
Great post and super-interesting read! The more pertinent question (imho) is about heathspan and life satisfaction, not just years around the sun, but I realize it's nearly impossible to get data like that.
This is great work, but the present tense is a bit misleading. A big caveat here is that there's a huge delay due to normal human lifespans & the fact that this work considered those billionaires that have already died. That means we're talking here about people for whom most of their decades were lived when medical knowledge & technology was 3-5 decades older than it is today.
Karl, thanks a lot for reading and the kind words.
Yes, I agree there are limitations and I did cut some corners. The nature of this work is less about precision and more about telling a story. Data availability is very poor, especially on billionaires. They're mostly studied as n=1 and very rarely in the context of health.
Your point about the time lag is valid. These are people who lived most of their decades with 30-50 year older medicine. Whether today's billionaires will do better is an open question. My bet: marginally, until we actually solve aging.
You compare to Hong Kong lifespan TODAY, but if these people died 2015-2025 at mean age 83, they would have been born in late 1930s right? And at the time, median lifespan was like 60. So counter to what I too originally concluded, it seems like ultra-rich could in that period buy 30% longer lives. Now probably a lot of that is avoiding infectious and war deaths.
I spent most of the two months on this research exploring exactly this problem (finding valid comparators). The comparators I ended up with are not ideal - think of them as the least bad options that I was able to find.
Life expectancy at birth in the 1930s-40s was ~60 primarily due to high infant/child mortality, not because adults died at 60. A man born in 1940 who survived to age 50 already had a conditional LE of 72-75. So the "30% longer" framing compares the wrong numbers.
That's why in the study I use two approaches that avoid this trap:
1) Person-years with age-stratified SMR - comparing billionaires aged 50+ to Hong Kong males aged 50+ using mortality rates from the same time period (2015-2023). This sort of levels the playing field.
2) Conditional LE at 50 (remember median age of becoming a billionaire is 58). It has to be applied with caution, because of differences in population structure.
You could also argue several potential future billionaires died at age 5 from polio - they never got the chance to make the Forbes list. That's survivorship bias baked into the dataset.
For more details you can look in the Can Money Buy years section, in Methodology Note and in the Methodology
Great post and super-interesting read! The more pertinent question (imho) is about heathspan and life satisfaction, not just years around the sun, but I realize it's nearly impossible to get data like that.
Wow, this is some great research
thanks! I spent two months compiling it!
Very interesting. My group is actively working on this issue. Interesting vectors you used. Thank you
thank you!
Very nice article! Would you be able to share the source / list of people who had a neurodegenerative disease?
Carol Jenkins Barnett, 65, USA, $2.5B — Early-onset Alzheimer's
https://corporate.publix.com/newsroom/news-stories/publix-remembers-carol-jenkins-barnett
Richard Rainwater, 71, USA, $3.0B — Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP)
https://fortune.com/2015/09/28/richard-rainwater-obituary/
Patrick Bowlen, 75, USA, $1.0B — Alzheimer's
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/longtime-broncos-owner-pat-bowlen-dies-at-the-age-of-75-after-battling-alzheimers/
Suna Kirac, 76, Turkey, $1.4B — ALS
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/leading-turkish-businesswoman-dies-at-age-77-158290
Chuck Bundrant, 77, USA, $1.3B — Parkinson's
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/trident-seafoods-chuck-bundrant-a-pioneer-of-u-s-fisheries-off-alaska-dies-at-79/
Allan Goldman, 78, USA, $2.8B — Parkinson's
https://www.yahoo.com/news/longtime-caretaker-jealously-manipulated-nyc-185642659.html
Gary Burrell, 79, USA, $1.9B — Parkinson's
https://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity-deaths/gary-burrell-1937-2019-garmin-co-founder-brought-gps-to-the-masses/
Robert Brockman, 81, USA, $4.7B — Dementia
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-06/robert-brockman-software-developer-who-fought-irs-dies-at-81
Robert Toll, 81, USA, $1.3B — Parkinson's
https://investors.tollbrothers.com/news-and-events/press-releases/2022/10-07-2022-161906096
Joseph Safra, 82, Brazil, $22.8B — Parkinson's
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Safra
Rudy Ma, 82, Taiwan, $3.3B — Alzheimer's
https://www.forbes.com/sites/shanshankao/2022/10/21/taiwan-billionaire-rudy-ma-founder-of-yuanta-financial-holdings-dies-at-82/
John Orin Edson, 87, USA, $1.4B — Lewy body dementia
https://www.pdbmagazine.com/2019/09/bayliner-founder-j-orin-edson
Liliane Bettencourt, 94, France, $39.5B — Alzheimer's
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/liliane-bettencourt-billionaire-loreal-heiress-dies-at-94/2017/09/21/344028c2-9ef0-11e7-9083-fbfddf6804c2_story.html
Awesome. Thanks a lot!
Love this, Alexey. I did a similar analysis about three years ago but never wrote it up. Your review is even more thorough. Thank you!
thanks! really appreciate it!
That’s so interesting!
Thanks Nata!
Appreciate you reading this!