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We use harmonized household panel data from Europe and the US and a three-state survival model to provide comparable measurements of education and gender inequalities in total, healthy, and unhealthy life expectancies at age 50. Common across countries, the education advantage in total life expectancy is larger for males but the education advantage in (fewer) unhealthy years is larger for females. Counterfactual decompositions show that these results arise because the education advantage in conditional survival rates is relatively more important for males, while the education advantage in better health transitions is relatively more important for females. Across countries, the US stands out with the largest education gradient in healthy life expectancy.

We propose a methodology to classify individuals into few but meaningful health groups by estimating a panel Markov switching model that exploits rich information from panel household surveys. Using the HRS, we identify four persistent health groups, depending on individual's physical and mental disabilities. Our classification outperforms existing health measures at explaining entry in nursing homes, home health care, out-of-pocket medical expenses, and mortality for individuals in the HRS, ELSA, and SHARE. Through a workhorse model of savings, we recover an asset cost of bad health that is twice as big as when using self-reported health.

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