Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Lift me up
Public Health | Healthcare
June 20, 2023 – A range of factors, from balancing stress to having a sense of purpose, can affect the health and well-being of aging populations. The potential “uplift”—or net positive effect—such factors can have on older adults varies by country, according to a survey by senior partners Hemant Ahlawat and Viktor Hediger and coauthors. In Japan, for example, exercising has significant potential for improving the perceived health of aging residents, while being a respected part of a community has high potential for South Koreans. Click through the interactive to see more.
Interactive
To read the article, see “Age is just a number: How older adults view healthy aging,” May 22, 2023.
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Visual form
Slide-by-slide ranking bar chart.
Layout / body structure
The chart is an sequence, and each slide presents one health factor as a ranked horizontal bar chart by country, so the reader moves factor by factor rather than staying in one fixed panel.
What is being compared
It compares the average uplift in perceived health from different factors, such as exercising, continuing education, balancing stress, and feeling that perspective is valued, across countries and income-group cohorts.
Measurement system
The horizontal measure is percentage-point uplift in very good or good health from baseline, and a dashed vertical line marks the 12 percent threshold where differences are statistically significant at a 95 percent confidence level.
Visible structure inside the graphic
Each slide ranks countries from top to bottom, colors the bars by high-income, upper-middle-income, and lower-middle-income economies, and uses the same green background, shared scale, and legend box to keep the frames comparable.
Main takeaway from the visual
The chart is designed to show that the strongest uplift factors differ by country, with some markets leading on exercise-related gains and others standing out on stress, education, or community-based measures.
Key standout values or extremes
In the exercise slide, Japan is the clear top bar at close to 48 percentage points, while in the continuing-education slide Japan again leads above 40, and the 12 percent reference line makes it easy to see which country bars sit meaningfully above the significance threshold.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
The reader can step through separate factor slides, and each step reorders the same country list into a new ranking so the uplift pattern can be compared across different dimensions of healthy aging.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart is the full visual on this page.