Vasily Yurenkov, founder and CEO of Greener Relocation, looks at the wealth-longevity paradox – and how it varies between countries.
The wealth gap between a Forbes 400 billionaire and a typical American is roughly 30,000x. The longevity premium in the US is a mere 3.7 years.
That second figure comes from a brief analysis we at Greener Relocation conducted using a dataset compiled by researcher Alexey Strygin for his analysis published in February 2026. Strygin verified 389 billionaire deaths across 27 countries between 2015 and 2025, drawing on Forbes, Bloomberg, and Hurun records. His main conclusion, in his own words, is that “the billionaire longevity dividend appears to fall somewhere between 0 and 4 years beyond the world’s healthiest population” – for men, and becomes negative for women.
We borrowed that dataset from Alexey and asked a different question: can we see any country-specific variation?
The second ceiling of longevity
We calculated country-level longevity premiums for billionaires against their fellow compatriots. The benchmark was life expectancy at the age of 57, the median age for entering the Forbes list.
The range is staggering. In the Philippines, billionaires outlive their generation-matched peers by 14.6 years. In Brazil, by 9.1 years. In the US, as mentioned earlier, 3.7 years. In Germany, France, and the Netherlands, countries with some of the strongest and most accessible public health systems in the world, the premium is essentially zero. Some countries, like China*, even show a negative premium! This suggests that, apart from purely biological limitations of current longevity treatments, there are also other limiting factors at play.
We’ve checked the country premiums against the quality of the public health system using GBD Healthcare Access and Quality Index (HAQ) as a proxy. While this is definitely not the only factor behind the variation, conceptually, the logic seems to hold: countries with higher billionaire longevity premiums tend to have lower HAQ scores.
Alexey Strygin, the author of the original dataset and research, framed it very precisely: “What I like about Greener Relocation’s study is that it takes my dataset and turns it into a country-to-country map instead of just ‘the rich versus everyone else’. We already knew from my analysis that extreme wealth does not break the biological ceiling after 90 – the survival curve of billionaires eventually converges with that of the healthiest countries. What Vasily and his team show is that there seems to be a systemic ceiling too: in countries with strong public healthcare, there is very little extra longevity left for money to buy, while in weaker systems wealth may convert into additional years of life.”
Strygin’s original work showed that wealth cannot break the biological ceiling after 90. Our country-level analysis suggests there may also be a second, systemic, ceiling. And, unlike the biological ceiling, removing this one doesn’t require any fundamental scientific breakthroughs.
The smarter investment
For decades, the US has had the most advanced, tip-of-the-spear medical protocols, technology, and drugs available to patients – to those who had enough money, obviously. One would expect to see a considerable longevity premium for America’s rich, even if, for the world as a whole, there is barely any. And yet we don’t. The 30,000x advantage leads to a mere few more years of lifespan. In a country where the public baseline is already high, the private dollar runs into the same ceiling as everyone else.
That should give the longevity investors pause. There’s been genuine progress in ageing biology, risk stratification, and personalised interventions. Most investment goes into the premium offerings affordable only to a narrow slice of wealthy clients. Yet, available data suggest that wealth, despite granting access to cutting-edge solutions, translates into surprisingly modest gains in lifespan..
Strygin’s original conclusion was that the best chance for billionaires to extend their lives beyond what is possible now (around 90 years) lies in funding longevity and medical research. Our country comparison adds an additional perspective: to break the systemic ceiling one may want to invest in extending the lifespan of the population as a whole, however counter-intuitive it may sound. This is particularly true for countries that already enjoy a relatively high baseline.
* NB A few words on a country where billionaires live notably less than their compatriots: China (~13.6 years). Until we have a better model that better accounts for all the factors in play, a rule of thumb I’d suggest is this: if there is a real chance of billions in your future, China may not be the healthiest place for you to be while pursuing them.
READ MORE: How billionaires die and The curious virality of billionaire mortality data
About Vasily Yurenkov
Vasily Yurenkov is the founder and CEO of Greener Relocation, a Netherlands-based analytical agency at the intersection of data science and location intelligence. Greener Relocation helps individuals and families make informed relocation decisions by evaluating 600+ parameters across 175+ cities worldwided using proprietary models and peer-reviewed methodologies. Vasily works at the intersection of data analysis and relocation decisions – and believes that where you live is one of the most consequential choices shaping both your quality of life and your longevity.
