U.S. Healthcare Spending vs. OECD Health Outcomes
The United States Spends the Most, While Key Population Health Indicators Lag
The United States spent USD PPP 14,885 per person on health in the OECD’s 2024-or-nearest-year comparison. That was 2.49 times the OECD average of USD PPP 5,967. U.S. life expectancy was 78.4 years, 2.7 years below the OECD average, while infant mortality was 5.5 deaths per 1,000 live births versus 4.0 across the OECD.
The comparison shows an unusually large U.S. spending gap, but it does not prove that spending alone causes population outcomes. Life expectancy and infant mortality also reflect social conditions, health risks, violence and injuries, maternal and infant health, access to care, and differences in national registration practices.
Coverage: all 38 OECD members. Primary ranking metric: current health expenditure per capita in USD PPP, highest to lowest. Context indicators: life expectancy at birth and infant mortality. No forecasts or modeled projections are included. This page reproduces the fixed Health at a Glance 2025 figures; it is not a synthetic 2026 estimate.
Rank 1 of 38 OECD members.
USD PPP 8,918 above the OECD average.
Tied 30th; OECD average 81.1 years.
33rd when lower mortality ranks better; OECD average 4.0.
How the U.S. Compares With the OECD Average
The three indicators answer different questions. Spending measures the value of healthcare resources used per person after purchasing-power adjustment. Life expectancy is a broad population-health measure. Infant mortality reflects conditions affecting mothers and infants as well as parts of health-system performance.
Five Benchmarks That Put the U.S. Gap in Context
The compact table compares the United States with the OECD average, the second-highest spender, the country with the highest life expectancy among OECD members in the figure, and the lowest-spending OECD member.
Selected OECD benchmarks
| Spend rank | Country | Spending | Life expectancy | Infant mortality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $14,885Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 78.4 years2023 | 5.5 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| — | OECD average | $5,967Figure 7.4 average | 81.1 years2023 | 4.0 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 2 | Switzerland | $9,963Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 84.3 years2023 | 3.4 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 19 | Japan | $5,790Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 84.1 years2023 | 1.8 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 38 | Mexico | $1,588Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 75.5 years2024 | 11.9 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
Top 20 OECD Members by Health Spending per Person
The chart ranks spending only. It does not label higher spending as better and should be read together with the life-expectancy and infant-mortality columns in the full table.
Source: OECD Health at a Glance 2025, Figure 7.4. The 2024 spending values are provisional figures submitted by countries or OECD Secretariat estimates.
Why Healthcare Spending and Population Outcomes Differ Across Countries
Prices and system organisation
Per-capita spending reflects prices as well as the amount and mix of care delivered. Payment rules, provider prices, pharmaceutical prices, insurance design and administrative arrangements can raise expenditure without producing a proportional increase in measured health.
Use of services and clinical mix
Countries differ in hospital activity, outpatient care, long-term care, medicines, diagnostic intensity and use of high-cost technology. The same spending total can therefore represent different combinations of services.
Population risks outside healthcare
Life expectancy is influenced by smoking, alcohol, diet, obesity, road injuries, homicide, suicide, infectious disease, income, education and environmental conditions. A national health-spending figure does not control for these factors.
Maternal and infant conditions
Infant mortality depends on antenatal and childbirth care, prematurity, birth weight, newborn care, feeding practices and social conditions. OECD also warns that registration practices for premature infants can affect cross-country comparability.
The OECD’s dedicated U.S. expenditure study and its health-sector price analysis should be used for causal explanations. The ranking itself is descriptive and does not estimate how much of the U.S. gap is caused by any single factor.
Methodology and Limits
Primary metric
Current health expenditure per capita converted to U.S. dollars with purchasing-power parities. Rank direction is descending because the table measures spending size, not performance.
Coverage
All 38 OECD members shown in the report figure are included. The OECD average and accession or partner economies are excluded from the country ranking.
Spending reference period
Figure 7.4 is labelled 2024 or nearest year. OECD states that 2024 values are provisional country submissions or OECD Secretariat estimates. The figure does not identify a separate exact nearest year for every bar, so this page does not invent one.
Life-expectancy years
Most values are for 2023. Chile, Colombia and Mexico use 2024 data; Türkiye uses 2022. The exact year is shown in every table row.
Infant-mortality periods
Most values are 2021–2023 averages. New Zealand uses 2018–2022, Colombia 2019–2021 and Costa Rica 2020–2022. The exact period is shown in every row.
What is calculated here
Spending ranks, the U.S. percentage gap and the U.S. positions on the two context indicators are page calculations from the displayed values. Source values are not averaged or projected.
Life expectancy and infant mortality are population-health indicators, not complete scores of healthcare quality. They should not be used to rank individual hospitals, insurers, clinicians or treatments. PPPs are statistical conversion tools, and small spending differences between countries should not be overinterpreted.
OECD Health Spending Ranking With Population Health Context
Search or reorder the 38 rows. The first column always remains the spending rank, even when the table is reordered by life expectancy or infant mortality.
All 38 OECD members ranked by health spending per person
| Spend rank | Country | Spending | Life expectancy | Infant mortality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $14,885Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 78.4 years2023 | 5.5 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 2 | Switzerland | $9,963Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 84.3 years2023 | 3.4 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 3 | Norway | $9,393Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 83.1 years2023 | 2.0 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 4 | Germany | $9,365Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 81.1 years2023 | 3.1 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 5 | Netherlands | $8,436Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 81.9 years2023 | 3.4 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 6 | Austria | $8,401Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 81.9 years2023 | 2.6 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 7 | Luxembourg | $8,087Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 83.4 years2023 | 3.6 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 8 | Sweden | $7,871Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 83.4 years2023 | 2.0 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 9 | Ireland | $7,813Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 82.9 years2023 | 3.3 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 10 | Belgium | $7,750Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 82.5 years2023 | 3.0 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 11 | Australia | $7,469Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 83.0 years2023 | 3.2 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 12 | France | $7,367Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 83.0 years2023 | 3.9 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 13 | Canada | $7,301Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 81.7 years2023 | 4.5 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 14 | Denmark | $7,071Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 81.8 years2023 | 2.4 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 15 | Iceland | $6,770Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 82.4 years2023 | 2.3 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 16 | United Kingdom | $6,747Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 81.0 years2023 | 4.1 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 17 | Finland | $6,655Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 81.6 years2023 | 1.9 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 18 | New Zealand | $6,097Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 82.0 years2023 | 4.6 per 1,0002018–2022 avg. |
| 19 | Japan | $5,790Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 84.1 years2023 | 1.8 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 20 | Slovenia | $5,527Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 82.0 years2023 | 2.0 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 21 | Spain | $5,346Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 84.0 years2023 | 2.6 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 22 | Portugal | $5,212Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 82.5 years2023 | 2.5 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 23 | Italy | $5,164Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 83.5 years2023 | 2.4 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 24 | Czechia | $5,014Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 79.9 years2023 | 2.2 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 25 | Korea | $4,797Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 83.5 years2023 | 2.4 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 26 | Israel | $4,352Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 83.8 years2023 | 2.8 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 27 | Poland | $4,284Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 78.4 years2023 | 3.9 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 28 | Lithuania | $4,259Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 77.6 years2023 | 3.0 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 29 | Slovak Republic | $4,021Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 78.2 years2023 | 5.3 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 30 | Estonia | $3,768Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 79.1 years2023 | 2.0 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 31 | Chile | $3,749Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 81.6 years2024 | 6.1 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 32 | Greece | $3,607Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 81.8 years2023 | 3.3 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 33 | Latvia | $3,411Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 75.6 years2023 | 2.6 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 34 | Hungary | $3,303Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 76.7 years2023 | 3.3 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 35 | Türkiye | $2,309Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 77.3 years2022 | 9.3 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
| 36 | Costa Rica | $1,935Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 81.0 years2023 | 8.7 per 1,0002020–2022 avg. |
| 37 | Colombia | $1,877Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 77.5 years2024 | 16.8 per 1,0002019–2021 avg. |
| 38 | Mexico | $1,588Figure 7.4 · 2024 or nearest | 75.5 years2024 | 11.9 per 1,0002021–2023 avg. |
Spending: USD PPP per person, Figure 7.4. Life expectancy: years at birth, Figure 3.1. Infant mortality: deaths before age one per 1,000 live births, Figure 3.12.
What Stands Out in the OECD Comparison
Largest spending gap
The United States spends USD PPP 4,922 more per person than Switzerland, the second-highest spender, and USD PPP 8,918 more than the OECD average.
Life expectancy pattern
Twenty-nine of the other 37 OECD members have higher life expectancy than the United States in the displayed reference years. The United States is tied with Poland at 78.4 years.
Infant mortality pattern
Thirty-two OECD members have lower infant mortality than the United States. The U.S. rate is 37.5% above the OECD average.
Important counterexample
Japan spends USD PPP 5,790 per person—less than the OECD average—while reporting 84.1 years of life expectancy and infant mortality of 1.8 per 1,000. This is descriptive evidence, not proof of a single causal mechanism.
How to Interpret the U.S. Position
The clearest conclusion is about scale: the United States commits substantially more healthcare resources per person than any other OECD member in this report snapshot. The outcome columns show that this spending advantage does not translate into leading values for two broad population-health indicators.
The comparison cannot tell readers how much of the gap comes from prices, administrative costs, utilisation, disease burden, social inequality or health behaviour. Those questions require decomposed expenditure, price, access, quality and risk-factor data. The ranking is therefore a starting point for analysis, not a causal scorecard.
The most defensible policy reading is value-for-money: higher spending creates the capacity to deliver more or better care, but results also depend on how resources are priced, allocated and accessed, and on conditions outside the medical system.
FAQ
Does the United States spend the most on healthcare per person?
Yes. In OECD Figure 7.4, the United States ranks first at USD PPP 14,885 per person, compared with USD PPP 5,967 across the OECD.
Are these 2026 healthcare spending values?
No. This is a source-checked 2026 page using the fixed Health at a Glance 2025 report snapshot. The spending figure is labelled 2024 or nearest year; the page does not generate synthetic 2026 values.
Why use USD PPP instead of nominal U.S. dollars?
Purchasing-power parities adjust for national price-level differences and make the quantity of resources represented by spending more comparable. They are still statistical conversion factors, so small gaps should be read cautiously.
Are life expectancy and infant mortality direct measures of healthcare quality?
No. Both are affected by healthcare, but also by social, economic, behavioural and environmental conditions. Infant-mortality comparisons can additionally be affected by differences in registering very premature births.
Why is the spending rank not called a performance rank?
Because more spending is not automatically better. The rank measures the size of expenditure per person. Performance requires separate evidence on access, quality, preventable mortality, treatable mortality and patient outcomes.
What other indicators should be used with this table?
Useful additions include spending as a share of GDP, healthcare price levels, estimated service volumes, preventable and treatable mortality, unmet need, insurance coverage and financial protection.
Sources
OECD Health at a Glance 2025 — Health expenditure per capita
Primary source for the spending ranking, OECD average, USD PPP unit and provisional/estimated 2024 note.
OECD Health at a Glance 2025 — Life expectancy at birth
Source for country life-expectancy values, the OECD average and year exceptions.
OECD Health at a Glance 2025 — Maternal and infant mortality
Source for infant-mortality values, exact averaging-period exceptions and comparability limits.
OECD Health at a Glance 2025 — United States
Source for the U.S. comparison, spending as a share of GDP, preventable mortality and treatable mortality.
OECD — Understanding differences in U.S. health expenditure
Supporting analysis for interpreting why U.S. spending differs from other OECD countries.
OECD members and partners
Used to distinguish the 38 OECD members from accession and partner economies shown in some report figures.
