We estimate the life expectancy gap that can be bridged by improving the quality of public health and health care policies at EU level. Our model calculates the net effect of amenable deaths on life expectancy after controlling for fixed effects (capturing time invariant country specific factors affecting the dependent variable independently from amenable deaths such as local environmental conditions and genetic factors) and time dummies (capturing global trends such as scientific and medical progress that “lift up” life expectancy independently from the quality of domestic health systems) in a model that accounts for more than 80 percent of the overall variability of life expectancy across years. We as well find evidence of beta convergence in amenable deaths across countries in our sample period. Based on our coefficients we estimate the life expectancy gap that countries with lower quality health systems can bridge if catching up and reaching the existing health quality frontier, computing the social value of that upside potential.
 

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