The Global Quality-of-Life Market: A Strategic Imperative
The global quality-of-life (QoL) market is expanding beyond its traditional roots in health and life sciences to become a strategic priority for all sectors, including real estate, technology, and consumer-facing industries. Executives prioritizing QoL estimate that related offerings could represent 9 to 15 percent of annual sector revenues over the next decade, potentially amounting to $6.7 trillion to $11.2 trillion in market growth by 2034.
What’s more, investment in QoL-related industries has surged in recent years. Venture capital funding for digital health in the United States has grown fivefold between 2013 and 2023, and funds are channeling significant resources into longevity-focused research and development. These trends position QoL as a critical focus for investors, consumers, and businesses alike.
To better understand this evolution, McKinsey conducted a global survey of C-suite executives that explored sentiments across sectors and geographies about this emerging market, its potential impact, and the opportunities it presents. This piece presents the survey’s findings and explores how companies and investors across sectors can enter the QoL market and make the most of it.
Quality of life: An emerging market and cross-sectoral imperative
Understanding the QoL market begins with distinguishing two pivotal concepts: lifespan and health span. Lifespan focuses solely on the total number of years a person lives, while health span emphasizes the quality of those years—the time spent in good health, free from chronic illnesses or debilitating conditions.
The QoL market aspires to extend both lifespan and health span, enabling individuals to live additional years with vitality and well-being. This dual focus has allowed the market to expand beyond its traditional association with healthcare and extend into sectors such as information technology, finance, and consumer staples.
Five factors propelling the QoL market
- Rising consumer expectations for well-being
- Increased investment in digital health technologies
- Shift towards preventive healthcare
- Growing demand for personalized health solutions
- Emergence of holistic well-being ecosystems
The democratization of QoL across sectors and industries
The rise of the QoL market presents a strategic imperative for companies to engage with evolving consumer preferences. These shifts enable businesses to redefine their relationships with consumers, meet holistic health demands, and create new sources of value and competitive advantage through three distinct opportunities:
- Enhancement of core products and services through a QoL lens.
- Development of new QoL-specific products and services that cater to different dimensions of QoL.
- Creation of QoL ecosystems.
Technology-first sectors lead innovation through digital QoL platforms
The accelerating shift toward QoL is most evident in technology-first sectors, in which companies are reimagining digital platforms as powerful enablers of personal health.
Gaming, media, and entertainment platforms, once purely leisure-focused, are now emerging as innovative health engagement tools. Companies are developing immersive, wellness-focused games using virtual reality to enhance physical and mental health engagement.
Content platforms are evolving to optimize for QoL outcomes. Music platforms, for example, are embracing this shift by using sophisticated algorithms to create personalized playlists that adapt to reflect a user’s typical mood at specific times of the day.
Conclusion
The QoL market is not a passing trend—it’s a structural shift in how businesses define success and how investors uncover value. For companies, QoL represents an opportunity to innovate, redefine their offerings, and build deeper connections with consumers. For investors, it opens doors to growth across sectors, driven by demographic shifts, technology advancements, and new revenue models.
As QoL becomes central to consumer behavior and business strategy, the leaders in this space will be those that move beyond incremental change and embrace QoL as a transformative priority. Both executives and investors have pivotal roles to play in shaping the future of this market—and in doing so, capturing its full potential.
FAQ
Q: What are the key enablers for cross-sector expansions into the QoL market?
A: The key enablers include clear strategic direction, strategic partnerships and joint ventures, attracting and retaining technical talent, and prioritizing trust building with end users.
Q: How can investors capture value in the QoL market?
A: Investors can identify opportunities within existing portfolios, capitalize on cross-sector convergence, and evaluate macrotrends through a demographic lens to capture value in the QoL market.
